Martha's Vineyard, migrants, and loving your neighbour
It's a lot easier in theory than in practice.
For anyone who’s been under a rock for the past week or so, a pretty hilarious drama unfolded when Florida governor Ron DeSantis flew 50 illegal migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, an exclusive enclave of extremely rich people who, despite professing to welcome immigrants and to be a “sanctuary city”, promptly responded by shipping them off the island in less than two days.
Although I am pro-immigrant, I found it pretty funny. The hilarity, of course, comes from the hypocrisy. The white liberals on Martha’s Vineyard profess to love and welcome migrants, but when some actually show up, they don’t know what to do with them. Their “love” for migrants is purely theoretical, a moral posture calculated to gain social points and make them feel good about themselves. It’s a status symbol on the same level as their enormous mansions and yachts. As soon as it runs into the reality of actual migrants, in their community, demanding a real-life response from them, they want nothing to do with them.
While it’s easy to skewer the perceived hypocrisy of rich liberals, in reality none of us are very different from the Martha’s Vineyard denizens. It’s all too easy to “love” people who are far away from us and make no demands on us, our time, our convenience, our comfort, our money, or anything else we value. Real people are messy and difficult. They are annoying. They can be demanding and ungrateful, even when we’re giving everything we can to help them. They have personality issues and mental problems and addictions and criminal histories. Helping humanity is not all sweetness and light.
Verbally professing to love people while doing nothing practically to help them is not a new issue; it’s as old as humanity. Scripture addresses it in many places:
If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? (James 2:15-16)
But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:17-18)
I’ve volunteered extensively with immigrants, refugees, and the homeless in Mexico and Canada. Some of them are the loveliest people you will ever meet. Some of them are annoying, frustrating, or even dangerous. And yet God’s call is the same: to love them. What that looks like may vary from person to person. But it’s always practical, physical, and costly.
Walking out the command to love “in deed and in truth” is much more difficult than posting social media slogans and yard signs professing love for groups of people you never contact in daily life. But it’s the only thing that reveals the reality or unreality of our love, and it requires dependence on the God of love to be able to do when we don’t have the human capacity to love the person in front of us.
Slogans cost nothing. Real love costs, and it does not tend to advertise by talking about itself, it just gets on with doing the practical acts of love.
"Slogans cost nothing. Real love costs..." well said!
Well stated, thank you!