Jackson Free Press

For what its worth: What I am about to write is after a lot of prayer, and I am ashamed to say a lot of struggle. And, yes, who am I to think what I would write about this would make a dime's worth of difference in the first place? Probably none at all.

Where in the teachings of Jesus does it say that it's fine for Christians to turn their backs on people who have been mercilessly driven from their homes and have no food or shelter and ask it of us? I understand that a small percentage may be here to do us harm, and hopefully they will be rooted out in screening, but it's only to quote the obvious. After rebuking them on the left hand, and they ask why, The King (Jesus) replies, Matthew 25; 42-43 "For I was hungry, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited me not.... verse 45: Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me."

Do we only hear Jesus when he tells us what we want to hear? I know that this may lose me friends, good friends whom I cherish, but to see the Bible Belt so uniformly react as they have is disturbing. Can those of us who believe in Jesus and love Jesus when we search our heart of hearts ... can we, past all the noise and the rhetoric, can we ultimately look at the naked truth of Christ, and can we honestly say that this is what Jesus would have wanted us to do?

After World War II, the U.S. insisted that the Nazis be tried. The world concurred, and those people who were so obviously guilty were given a trial because we said it was the right thing to do. I feel like our current moral crisis over Syrian refugees defines who we are as a nation every bit as much as those trials did then. No, we probably don't do enough to feed the poor and homeless that we already have, and yes, we must do more to accommodate all of the disenfranchised in this country.

And yes, isn't it sad that it takes something like this to even address the issue? But it is what it is, and this is an opportunity to address all those things in the broad daylight so that we are forced to take the mask away on who we say we are to expose, not just to the world, but more importantly to ourselves who we really are. And it is up to all of us ever after to live with that.

Actor and director John Maxwell founded the nonprofit, Fish Tale Group, which is dedicated to revitalizing interest in the Bible through original dramas.