We have no choice but to choose sides. In the face of injustice, silence is not neutrality.
However, there is great danger in claiming God is on one’s side. History’s cruelest acts have been disguised as divine mandates.
Massive numbers of people have been slaughtered, displaced and subdued by those seeking to stir God into their mix of cruelty, corruption and conquest.
While claiming faithfulness they will boast: “We are killing all the right people.”
Not to be missed, however, is that Jesus took a different side. And did so with great consistency.
Someone has counted the thousands of times the Bible calls for caring for poor, the sick and the social outcast — and certainly Jesus cast his lot with those who are exploited.
Likewise, he consistently and sometimes harshly condemned those who lord themselves over others and exploit the most vulnerable for their own gain.
Rulers and other rich and powerful persons don’t generally appreciate that kind of critique. Which could lead to such a prophet being strung up in the cruelest form of execution.
In our modern context, as John Fugelsang notes in Separation of Church and Hate: “[N]obody hates like a Christian who’s just been told their hate isn’t Christian.”
For those of us who claim to follow Jesus, it is wise to read and learn from the ways he took sides. Like offering grace and hope to an outcast Samaritan woman with whom a Jewish man had no business chatting.
Going to dinner with a despised tax collector who exploited others to compensate for his lack of stature but with a heart capable of growing a few sizes larger.
Then, again and again, Jesus sided with vulnerable persons most easily targeted and demeaned by the powerful — those who never knew wealth or health because societal injustices kept them in suffering and servitude.
That is the side Jesus always took. Herod the Great, of course, was a different sort.
He reveled in the power he had seized. He didn’t call for followers; he demanded allegiance.
Herod loved massive building projects and exploited people with ease. He was insecure and cruel enough to violently remove anyone perceived to be a threat — including innocent children.
Since he’s the bad guy in biblical storytelling, one must wonder why so many of today’s Americanized Christians prefer his approach to power, abuse and conquest over Jesus’ call to self-denial, justice and compassion.
One is rooted in fear and favoritism, the other in faith and followship.
Clearly, Jesus called for choosing sides when he said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Matthew 16:24 NIV
Also, Jesus revealed what it looks like when those who claim to be his followers do or don’t take sides with those with whom he so closely identified — the hungry, the stranger, the sick and the imprisoned.
“Anything you didn’t do for one of the least important of these, you didn’t do for me.” Matthew 25:45 NIRV
And in the next verse he says: Get out of here.
Hmm. Seems we should choose sides more wisely.
John D. Pierce directs the Jesus Worldview Initiative (jesusworldview.org) for Belmont University’s Rev. Charlie Curb Center for Faith Leadership.