Barneyisfat

And they, looking for any excuse to get out of loving people, asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" They had been instructed to love their neighbor ... but, they figured there must be some loop hole, some way to circumnavigate the system, or some technicality to get them off the hook. Jesus made it blatantly obvious that none of these options are plausible. We are to love our neighbor.

Jesus told the story of the good samaritan. A chapel speaker, Landa Cope, said, "You want to know who your neighbor is - he's a gay muslim terrorist; he has AIDS and a knive and is going to kill you. That's your neighbor." When my pastor, David Lake, was a new pastor he led a youth retreat. A few of the youth did a skit portraying the good samaritan as a communist. A man stood up and screamed in the middle of the skit. He demanded that they change the skit. American kids need good American role models - not communist heros.

Today on the news they showed a man who had started pig races. He started them in response to the new Muslim community center which was built next to his property. The leader of the muslim congregation told the man that, although pigs are offensive to his faith, the pig races are fine by him, but are an obvious response based on xenophobia. He then said, "We are his neighbor."

Yep, not a single loophole in sight.