I’m not sure if people experience symptoms of bipolarity, multiple personality disorder or both, sometimes at the same time.  Bipolarity affects people who show extreme shifts in their mood, often swinging on one end from high energy, anger, or happiness to sadness, tiredness, and hopelessness on the other.  MPD (multiple personality disorder) by definition is someone who expresses two or more personality traits.  And it’s possible that people display symptoms of both.  Sometimes people are divided by who they are as Christians and who they are as people who belong to one political party or another.  They exhibit extreme highs when something goes against their political beliefs.  At the same time, they become extremely passive when something goes against their spiritual understanding of who they are.

         While this is not a clinical examination of two personality types, our society pushes the notion that we are somehow a Christian nation.  Yet — despite the presence of other non-Christian faiths —when we look for those Christian virtues directed toward immigrants and refugees, we find that those who have claimed Christ and who wield power are willing to allow evil to be directed toward those who are immigrants and refugees, rather than allowing the Spirit of good through Christian hospitality to rule their decisions.

         If Christian love is to be sincere and we are to seek and to do good, then abusing or ignoring the limits of Christian hospitality by allowing evil to thrive neither serves nor honors God.  It doesn’t invite us to maintain justice in the courts but allows evil to label us as hypocrites.  Pursuing God’s love by acknowledging our denomination’s social principles places us on the side of God’s justice and honors both God and good.

• What are some of the ways the church can do good and fight against evil in a political culture where immigrants and refugees are targets of White Christian Nationalist hatred?
• Where else in this current political climate can you see where doing good and opposing evil as a follower of Christ can have a significant impact?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Merciful God, make me a vessel of Your love and grace. Use me to do Your will using good as a spiritual weapon against the evil forces around me. (see also Ephesians 2:10)

         Love is the guiding principle for everything we believe about Christianity.  That principle is important in our relationship with good and evil.  We must love good and hate evil.  That principle is crucial to our desire to serve Christ.  It affects our relationship with others whether they are our friends, our enemies, or our brothers and sisters in the faith.  And it is most critical in our relationship with the moral and ethical challenges of the world around us.  We — all Christians everywhere — all called to be living witnesses of Christ’s love active in service to the world.  How we reflect that in our local communities doesn’t change our responsibility.  And a connecting link to our responsibility to love is our responsibility to show hospitality to those who are strangers in our midst.

         Our denominational effort has defined a Social Principle to guide us and keep us aware of that role. 

In ¶163.IV.G under Basic Rights and Freedoms, it says in short:

1. G) Migrants, Immigrants, and Refugees — We affirm the dignity, worth, and rights of migrants, immigrants, refugees, including displaced or stateless people, recognizing the growing global displacement crisis caused by war, famine, climate change, failed protections, and other forces. We urge United Methodists to welcome them into their congregations and provide concrete, practical support with immigration processes, food, housing, education, employment, and other needs. We oppose all laws and policies that separate families, criminalize, dehumanize, and detain in inhumane conditions displaced persons, and for-profit detention centers for such purposes.[1]

         So, we — by the word of God and in agreement with the policy of our church — have a moral and spiritual responsibility to those who are strangers in our community.  We have a spiritual obligation proposed by God to show them hospitality as well as a social responsibility laid out by the church to show those strangers among us the same love that Christ showed us.  In doing so, we empower ourselves to live faithfully to both the gospel of Jesus Christ as the church gives honor to the Word of God.

• What have been your feelings as you’ve seen our governments actions against those who are considered immigrants and displaced persons in our community?
• What can we do as a church to be a more active living witness to Christ’s love to the strangers around us?

[1] The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church, The Social Principles, p.147

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer
Gracious God, gently guide my heart to bear witness to Your love in my community and throughout the world. Enable me to welcome each person I meet with the warmth of Your hospitality.

         We all live in a world where we make choices.  Some of those choices are simple.  Others are more complex.  But each day we choose to do one thing over another — to eat one food over another; to give our time to one thing over another.  There is no difference in our ability to make choices when it comes to having the freedom to choose in matters related to God.  We get to choose obedience over disobedience.  We get to choose whether we will love our enemies or continue on a journey of revenge and retribution.  We get to choose whether or not we will either live according to that lifestyle that glorifies God or live a lifestyle that glorifies us.  To live a life outside of God’s desire and design for us is to thumb our nose at God’s plan while choosing to go it alone.  Essentially, it’s choosing to court a lifestyle disconnected from God — one that ultimately leads to death.  The other option is to take our cues from the Spirit of God, honoring God by not just how we live, but by acknowledging that we are proactively allowing ourselves to be led by the Spirit on our journey to life, to choose that option for ourselves and live.

• What choices have you made as a disciple of Jesus Christ that have led to a more fulfilled life for you or those around you?
• Why would you recommend that type of transition to someone who doesn’t believe in Christ?

Todays Prayer

Today’s Prayer —
Lord of grace and understanding, place within my heart and mind the desire to choose you and your will over my own self-imposed ideas. Teach me to walk each day according to your divine plans for my life, and not my own.