I will tell you that I am no Christian, but I will tell you that I was raised in a Christian household. I was baptized, went to Sunday School, was Confirmed, and attended church into adulthood. Because of that upbringing, I still think about the morals I learned from that religious upbringing. To this day, I judge right and wrong by what I learned in that church.

There has been a little bit of a dispute between The Pope of the Catholic Church, the Trump administration, the deportations, and Catholic convert Vance and his use of the concept from the medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as “Ordo Amoris”. I guess Vance has said the concept delineates a hierarchy of care – to family first, followed by neighbor, community, fellow citizen, and lastly those elsewhere. Being raised a Protestant I had never heard of it but then the Lutheran Church has no medieval saint.  I searched on the web and asked if “Ordo Amoris” was in the Bible and the short answer would be “no”. It is part of the medieval teaching of the Catholic Church. If you combine different verses like “care for orphans and widows in their affliction” James 1:27 and the Parable from Luke 11:5-8 about giving your neighbor three loaves of bread you can understand the message.   It is not a bad sediment because it is about love and the hierarchy or maybe better put it is about the order of love. However, we would have chaos without that order. But the entire concept was about love and as John Lenon said “All you need is love”.

I can understand the Pope being a little upset that the Vice President of the United States would use the medieval church's teaching of love by the Catholic Church and turn it into an excuse to deport people trying to escape tyranny as Jesus did when he sought asylum in Egypt. Yes, a person should love their own family before someone else's. I don’t need a medieval theologian teaching me something I already know. Of course, I would save my own family first but that doesn’t absolve me from saving strangers.  The late great Gayle Sayers wrote a book along the lines of “Ordo Amoris” called “I Am Third”. In his book, he said that God was first, family was second, and he was third or last. That always stuck with me to the point that when I think of Gayle Sayers I think of the book and not the football player. To twist it into something to justify their terrorization of children and detention camps in Cuba by using the philosophy of the order of love is no philosophy of love at all. It is using your religion and the hierarchy of love by a medieval saint as a tool to justify your racism bigotry and hate.

Even though I have walked away from the Church does not mean that I have walked away from many of its teachings. I often ask myself did Jesus come to save us or did he come to teach us how to save ourselves? I would prefer to think it is the latter. Is belief more important or is it how we live our lives? Can we say that we lived our lives as well as we can if we are letting our government put children in detention camps? How responsible are we for the conduct of our government that we voted for and allowed them to govern? As a people can we just wash our hands of the blood just like Pontious Pilate? Those are the questions that I think the church and the Pope should be asking.

Are we going to be judged by not only our religious faith but by history itself? As I have written many times in today's digital age, everything will live forever. All the lies and all the hatred bigotry and racism will be there for historians to witness like they were here. The videos, the marches, and the speeches will last long after we are gone. The White privilege and the lack of tolerance. How we had a chance to make the world a better place but we followed greedy Billionaires instead. When the German concentration camps were discovered many pleaded that they did not know. History has shown that many who stated “they did not know”, knew and did nothing. In today's digital age, no one is going to be able to say that they didn’t know. They will only be able to say that they didn’t care.

I will always remember the lessons of Reverand Siersbeck. He was long-winded at the pulpit but his sermons were always one of kindness and love. What we have today is not of love. It is not of love of God, it is not of love of our family, it is not of love of our community. It is from the hatred that we have because of racism and bigotry. We can say that we can’t afford to feed the world. I know that I am not rich enough and I think that the people that read this are not rich enough but we are the richest country on this planet. Our billionaires are rich enough to end world hunger and still be billionaires so don’t give me this “Ordo Amoris” crap because the hierarchy of love has nothing to do with it. It just comes down to hatred, racism, bigotry, and a really big dose of greed.

There are no bible verses in the Gospel to justify what we are doing today it is just the opposite. In Matthew 31-46: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all nations will assemble before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those in the right, ‘Come, you are blessed by my father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, as a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and fed, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you? And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least bothers of mine, you did for me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’ Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord when did we see you hungry or thirsty of a stranger or naked or ill or in prison and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

By the teaching of the Bible, the very book Trump held up, the very book that he autographed and then sold is very clear on how we should be treating those immigrants. The Pope has every right to be upset when the teachings of the church are used for Racism, Bigotry, and Hatred.