Some of you have no clue who Jim Wallis is. Others of you will know the name quite well (either from Sojourners or Glenn Beck). Some of you, I know, love him. Others hate him with a passion. I have read some of his stuff. And it is worthy of a read. I by no means come to the same conclusions that he does. But his voice is important as a counterweight to those who have tied Christianity and the Republican party together so tightly that seeking the intersection point between the two has become near impossible.
But yesterday I hear him speak about the Ground Zero Mosque (or the Area 51 Muslim Community Center if you wish). He said that we should let them build it because Jesus calls us to love our neighbors. I care not to weigh in on the question of whether a Mosque/Center should be built in that place in this post. But I do wish to say that when Wallis equates love of neighbor with tacit acceptance of whatever our neighbors wish to do, he is dead wrong. Show me one place where love of neighbor in the bible means supporting the building of an altar to a false God. Show me where loving neighbor means supporting their sin of idolatry. Never.
Since America is not a theocracy and we do have freedom of religion, we can argue whether the mosque should be built in this place of so much torment. But as Christians, we cannot argue that is it central to our faith’s tenet of love of neighbor that we place bricks with our hands in the midst of an idolatrous altar. To love neighbor is to rescue them from such sin. This work we must do with boldness, sincerity, and gentleness.
It is not just Wallis. The modern Christian church loves to take a biblical phrase like “love your neighbor” and fill it up with all the false notions of love that our culture has created. To love neighbor is to care for all of their true needs and not to pat their backs each time they do evil. To love neighbor is to tell them of Jesus.
