Remembering the Humanity of "The Other"

For your consideration: When, on Twitter, I posted a version of today's prayer update on a thirty-seven-year-old who has been hospitalized with COVID-19 and its effects for seventeen weeks, the first one to respond was a reporter for who covers the White House for a major news outlet.

I know her to be a faithful Christian with whom I interact fairly regularly.

I've had similar ongoing interactions for nearly two decades with one of her male colleagues who works for another major news outlet and also covers the White House. He too is a believer.

So too, is the veteran Ohio political reporter who has been praying regularly for Brian.

Christian friends and others: If we're tempted to smear everyone in "the media" the way some people smear everyone who is in "the Church," we should remember that broad generalizations do great injustice to particular people. 

Those particular people are human beings, children of God made in the image of God, and people for whom Jesus Christ died and rose. 

Just because they may report truths we don't want to believe or even if they may occasionally get particular facts wrong doesn't justify the venomous hatred I sometimes see and hear "Christians" display toward "the media."

Our call as Christians to love God and to love our neighbor also entails asking God to help us to refrain from lumping people in categories. 

People are not "the other" who we can vilify, dismiss, marginalize, or hate just because we're too lazy to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

The better course is, I think, for us to repent for the ways in which we actively or passively hate others and to ask the Holy Spirit to help us share with others the same undeserved grace and love we receive through faith in Jesus.