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Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. Alright, well, today I'm not feeling that great, but I figured I'd do an episode because I'm not sure I'll be able to get one out next Thursday.

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The AND Campaign and Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

I have a quick thing to say up front. And it's a sad thing. It's a sad thing. I have been blocked on Twitter by the Ann campaign. That's right. The Ann campaign, the statement about social justice, the statement that we have been told many times, the social justice movement and evangelicalism, not only does it not exist, but they don't have any statements.

But here's a statement here from the Ann campaign about biblical values and social justice. Now, if you notice, there's a phrase. It's a biblical phrase. It's a Bible verse that people that are on the social justice side of this debate often use.

And it's a very good verse. It's a good verse to use because I think it actually is very relevant to the issue of social justice, biblical justice, societal justice, whatever you want to call it. And it's the phrase, love your neighbor as yourself.

That's what justice is. It's about loving your neighbor as yourself. And so I think that it's a very appropriate to quote this verse when you're talking about issues of justice. Now, the problem, though, and this is this is a problem that's, I think, you know, rampant in all social justice rhetoric, is that when you say love your neighbor as yourself, you can't just use these words to mean whatever you want them to mean.

Because love your neighbor as yourself, when Jesus used that word, when the Old Testament uses that phrase, it's talking about specifics. It's not talking about just this ishy, squishy kind of love. It's talking about love as defined by the scriptures, as defined by the law of God.

Love, you see, is more than just a feeling. It's an action. Love is an action. If you love someone, you will act a certain way towards them. And God is very, very careful to give us, you know, the law.

And the law shows us how to act towards each other in love. And this is an important thing to remember. Now, the other thing I want to emphasize about love your neighbor as yourself is that it's actually the second greatest commandment.

And if you have a second greatest commandment, then you must have a first greatest commandment. And you cannot divorce these either, because the first greatest commandment, you might know this, is you will love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength.

So the first greatest commandment is love God. And only once you got that down, can you love your neighbor. And the reality is that this is critical. You have to love God more than your neighbor. You have to love God more than your neighbor.

And actually, if you don't love God, you can't love your neighbor. It's not possible. It's just not possible to do. We love because he first loved us. And so we need to love God enough to sometimes tell our neighbor, no.

Our neighbor might want something from us. Our neighbor might think he deserves something from us. But if the scripture says that our neighbor does not, and the scripture says we should not do what our neighbor is asking us to do, we need to love God more than we love our neighbor.

Obey God rather than our neighbor. And see, that's the big thing that's missing from a lot of social justice rhetoric. I said in a video just yesterday, I put a video out, and it was basically a roast of an old article that I had written myself.

And I commit this problem where I just kind of say, love your neighbor as yourself and expect it to do all the work for me and to basically mean everything that I want it to mean without proving it. That's something that is rampant.

So when you hear someone say, love your neighbor as yourself, that's good, but make sure that they're being specific enough that the love is actually something that has meaning to it, has meaning to it.

And so today I wanted to go through some of the statements here on the Ann Campaign's 2020 statement and talk about loving your neighbor as yourself because it's a very important aspect of any kind of statement on justice, any kind of statement on politics or civil policy or anything like that.

Love your neighbor as yourself is critical, but we've got to remember to love God first. Let's look at the Ann Campaign's mission statement. Here's what it says. It says, to educate and organize Christians for civic and cultural engagement that results in better representation, more just and compassionate policies, and a healthier political culture.

That certainly sounds like a pretty good mission, right? That certainly sounds like a pretty good mission. Let's get into the nuts and bolts of it, though, because that's really where, you know, that's where the rubber meets the road, right?

This is where we really get down to what they're talking about because a lot of those words you might be thinking, you know, just, compassionate, you know, things like that. Those are buzzwords, right?

They can mean anything. They're buzzwords. So let's start with the preamble, right? And I want to start here because they use the exact phrase that I just talked about. Here's the preamble. It says, the upcoming presidential election marks a significant decision point for our nation.

This moral moment requires principled conviction from politicians, but even more so from the American people. Christians have a particular obligation to provide this moral leadership. No candidate will be perfect, but Christians can hold both parties accountable to a vision for the common good that is not fully represented in either party platform.

While a misappropriation of the separation between church and states has sometimes been used to suggest people of faith are the only people who can't consider their values when participating in politics, we know that both our faith and the demands of citizenship require that we bring our full selves to the project of self-governance.

I couldn't agree more, by the way. Now, here's the sentence. Our Christian faith's call to recognize the image of God in every person and to love our neighbor as ourselves compels us to speak into the public square to promote social justice and moral order.

We have a spiritual responsibility as followers of Jesus to seek a common ground and the common good. We are obligated to protect the vulnerable and defend human dignity even of those with whom we disagree.

No Partiality in Loving Rich and Poor Neighbors

Now, I'm going to make the case, and hopefully I'll be able to demonstrate it with you in the next 12 minutes. I'm going to make the case that very often when we talk about loving our neighbor as ourselves, the second greatest commandment, oftentimes what we mean is love our vulnerable neighbor as ourselves or love the poor neighbor as ourselves or love the weak neighbor as ourselves, love the neighbor that doesn't look like us as ourselves.

And that is true. We should mean that. But God is not partial. I haven't counted, but again and again and again, the Bible talks about how God doesn't show partiality. He just doesn't. There is no partiality with God, and so we shouldn't show partiality either.

And so when we say love your neighbor as ourselves, that's all neighbors, right? So that's poor neighbors and rich neighbors. That's white neighbors and black neighbors. That's the oppressed class and the oppressor class.

However you want to say it, everyone needs to be treated with impartiality. We need to love rich people the way we would love ourselves. We need to love rich people according to the law of God. And lest you forget, remember you need to love God more than your neighbors, and God does not show partiality.

And so we cannot show partiality. And this is crucial with the issue of justice because God's law reminds us again and again in a court case, in a civil justice case, when we're deciding how the government should treat people, right?

We can't show partiality to the rich or the poor. The law of God is very specific about this. This is not up for interpretation. We cannot show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit or a rich man. So let's go through some of these things here and talk about partiality and talk about loving your neighbor as yourself.

Economic Justice, Wages, and Education Policy

Here's the section on the poor and pro-family economic policies. Here's what it says, this statement. America can't disregard poor people in policymaking. We need creative anti-poverty policies that work in tandem with and not opposition to other institutions, including the family and the church.

We believe in the dignity of work and that workers should receive a livable wage. Education should be accessible and equitable for all children. Paid family leave and enhanced child tax credits are both family-oriented policies that relieve the burden on hardworking parents and create opportunities for them to invest more time and resources into their children and loved ones.

In order for families and indeed the nation to thrive, women must be free from discrimination, harassment, and abuse. This all sounds really good, right? But what is really being said here? Let's just take one of these things, right?

We believe that every worker should receive a livable wage. What is being said there? So what's being said there is they want to establish a high minimum wage. Now, let's just forget for a moment the fact that that will never work.

I mean, the mathematics don't work on raising the minimum wage. All that does is make poor people poorer. So that's the facts, but let's just forget about that for a second because I'm not really that impressed with pragmatic reasoning here because God's law is very sufficient, right?

So remember, we got to love God first and then love our neighbors. What's being said when you say, well, we should have a livable wage, a minimum wage that's very high or a minimum wage at all? What's being said here is that the government has the right to tell a poor person what to charge for their labor and has a right to tell a rich person what they must do with their money.

And both of those things do not come from the law of God. Both of those things are unjust. We should not show favoritism to a poor person or to a rich person. And so to tell a poor person you can't sell your labor unless you can somehow get $15 an hour for it, which is what a minimum wage law is.

It's basically saying it doesn't magically make your labor worth $15 an hour. So if you can't make $15 an hour, then you're out of a job, unfortunately. This is what every example of minimum wage laws shows us, that people will find ways to have the cheapest cost to make the most money that they can.

There's nothing wrong with that. And so this will drive poverty up. And so we shouldn't have partial laws. We got to love our poor neighbors. Listen to this one. Education should be accessible and equitable for all children.

See, this is another thing. It sounds really good, right? Why shouldn't education be accessible and equitable for all? But the reality is this is an example of not loving our rich neighbors as ourselves.

Because here's the thing. If a rich person can afford a better education for their children than a poor person could afford, what's the problem with that? Why should the rich person be forced to pay for somebody else's education?

There's no reason for that. You see, again, it sounds very loving. It sounds very compassionate. But really what it is is it's a socialist type of a scheme which is not loving your neighbor as yourself.

It's not loving your rich neighbor as yourself. Do you see how this works? You can't love one person at the expense of another. That's not how God's law works. When God says love your neighbor as yourself, he means it.

And he doesn't just mean your poor neighbor. He doesn't just mean your rich neighbor. He means both. You need to treat everyone with equity. And so nobody gets a quote-unquote free education from the government.

That's not something God's law allows for. There's no such thing as free, obviously. But that's not something God's law allows for. Let's move on to something else. This is an interesting one too. Immigration, right?

Immigration, Sojourners, and Family Separation

Here's immigration. The statement says, The Trump administration has failed to treat undocumented immigrants with dignity and care, especially at the U .S.-Mexico border. In light of God's special concern for the immigrant and the sojourner, we are deeply dissatisfied with the federal government's continued negligence when it comes to passing comprehensive immigration reform.

The current administration's willingness to use draconian, manipulative measures to stoke fear in immigrant communities and pit family members against one another is reprehensible. Our government must seek to be both just and compassionate in regarding immigration policy, especially in protecting DREAMers and upholding longstanding laws regarding refugees, fleeing violence, lawlessness, and oppression.

Tons of buzzwords here. This is a buzzword soup, right? But what is being said here? I mean, I can only assume that with the kind of buzzwords that they're using, they're talking about the quote-unquote family separations at the border and things like that.

But again, here's the reality. We can't just love our immigrant neighbors, right? We can't just love our immigrant neighbors. We have to love everyone. There's no partiality with God. We have to love our native-born neighbors, and we have to love our immigrant neighbors.

And so this whole idea of this family separation thing, here's the reality. It doesn't look good to separate families and things like that, and it's not going to look good. But what we have to really be focused on is what is good as opposed to what just looks good.

And the reality here is we have to have some kind of a process, right? We have to have some kind of a screening process if we're going to love our native-born neighbors as ourselves. We can't just love the undocumented immigrant.

We have to love both, and we have to treat them with impartiality. And so what would happen if a native-born neighbor were to get arrested for something and they had three kids? Well, what would happen is that they'd be separated from their family because if your father kills someone, he's going to be in jail until he faces his trial.

And what happens to the kids? They don't go to jail with him. That would be insane, right? That would be insane. And so why would we treat immigrants who are breaking the law any differently? Not to mention the fact that, again, this doesn't look good.

It doesn't feel good for anyone to separate kids from their family. It never feels good. Even if the fathers are murderers, it doesn't feel good to separate kids from their family. It's a tragedy, right?

It's a tragedy. But in immigration, there are documented instances of people taking kids that don't belong to them, pretending that they're their kids so that they can get into the country. And what do you think that does to those kids, right?

It puts them at risk. There's human trafficking. I mean, that's a huge problem on the Mexican border, right? And so to stop them and say, we got to check this out because I know you say they're your kids and they might well be, but we need to check this out to make sure you're not trafficking these children, right?

So what about loving children as well as ourselves? You see, we can't just have this idea where there's one class of people that we should love as ourselves and the other class of people, they need to be put on hold because they're the oppressor class, I guess.

You have to love everybody. There's no partiality with God. Now what about this? This is the argument. This is the argument that you sometimes get, and this is something we need to address. This is a real argument.

God's Concern for the Oppressed Without Partiality

AD, what about all the times that God says that he's on the side of the oppressed? He's on the side of the poor. It even says this in this section here, in light of God's special concern for the immigrant and the sojourner.

Is that true? Does God have special concern for the immigrant and the sojourner? I'm here to tell you that yes, that is true. That is true. And yet, God does it without partiality. You see, when God says that he's on the side of the poor, he takes up the cause of the oppressed, it's not he takes up the cause of the oppressed no matter what.

Like if the oppressed has a bad cause, he's not on their side. If the oppressed wants to steal money from the rich, he's not on their side. You see, he takes up the cause of the oppressed because so often people won't take up the cause of the oppressed because there's nothing in it for them.

And so God will take up their cause when it is just. God is on the side of the righteous oppressed, not the unrighteous. Do you understand what I'm saying? You see, when God rained down fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, do you think there was probably some poor people there, some oppressed people there?

I would say probably yes. Probably there were. And when God comes in judgment on the last day and destroys all the wicked and stuff like that, you think there's going to be some poor amongst those wicked?

You better believe it. You see, God is not just blanket on the side of the poor and the oppressed. He's on the side of the poor and the oppressed when they have a righteous cause and when no one else will take their side.

Do you understand what I'm saying? So there's no partiality with God, and therefore there cannot be partiality with us. Here's the one I've already addressed before, but I want to talk about it in another way.

Abortion, Health Care, and Voluntary Charity

I talked about the abortion thing here, where the statement says that abortion should be vehemently discouraged. Talk about a wicked statement, vehemently discouraged. Killing children should be vehemently discouraged.

That's limp-wristed soy latte style. It's ridiculous. But there's another aspect to this as well. Listen to what the statement says. Again, let's think in our minds. How do we love our neighbors, all of them, rich and poor, without partiality?

It says, we believe in building a society that respects human dignity at all stages of life, including the unborn. This includes accessible and affordable health care for everyone. Americans should not go bankrupt because they get sick or die or because their medication is exorbitantly expensive.

This includes policies that support maternal health and address our nation's high rate of maternal mortality, especially among blacks and Native American women. It all sounds really good, doesn't it? But what they're talking about is socialized medicine.

What they're talking about is treating your rich neighbors with partiality, taking money from them by force, and giving it to poor neighbors so that they don't have to go bankrupt when they have medical expenses.

You can't love your poor neighbor at the expense of the rich neighbor. You have to love both without partiality. There is no partiality with God. We cannot steal from poor people. We cannot steal from rich people.

We cannot show compassion to poor people at the expense of showing compassion for rich people. We are required to be like God in this and not show partiality because there is no partiality with God. And while we do have to focus on loving our neighbor as ourselves, we first and foremost must love God, or we don't have any idea what it is to love your neighbor.

Now, here's the rub. Because all of this flowery rhetoric, all of these buzzwords and things like that, and we know that they're talking about this from a political perspective, a governmental perspective, and all of this, very few of these things are bad ideas.

And in fact, I want to have a situation where poor people can afford health care as well. But I want to do it in a way that doesn't show partiality. I want to do it where the church provides charity and compassion on people, and they help them.

I mean, I'm part of a health care share where people help me pay for my health care bills because they're too expensive for me. And you know what? They do it voluntarily. All I have to do is write them a letter and ask them for it.

And you know what they say? They say, sure. I remember my wife was pregnant with my second son. And if you've ever paid for a delivery, it's thousands and thousands of dollars. And I wrote a letter. I wrote a letter to my fellow Christians.

And I said, hey, here's the cost. We got a discount because we're cash customers, but it's still thousands upon thousands of dollars. And you know what? People started sending me checks. And they started saying, congratulations on the new child.

Ezra, that's a great name. Here's some cash. And you know what? That's what the church is all about, man. All about having compassion on the sojourner and the poor. And we can do it without partiality.

We can do it without hating our rich neighbors. We can do it out of love for Christ, because Christ commanded that we do these things. He didn't command that we get other people to do these things. He didn't command that we take from others in order to do these things.

He said, you do it. You see, the story of the good Samaritan, we get it all twisted up. We get it all twisted up, because we want to be like that Samaritan, right? And we want to help someone that needs help.

We don't want to be like the priest or the other guy, the Levi. We want to be like the Samaritan who helped someone who needed help, right? But we get it so twisted up, that somehow in our jacked up minds, we think we're doing what the Samaritan did when we vote for policies that take from our neighbors in order to take care of people that are hurt on the street.

And we feel like we're Samaritans. You're not. You're showing partiality. You're hating your neighbor when you vote for that kind of stuff. It's just that simple. You see, love your neighbor as yourself is a good starting point.

But it's only the beginning. In fact, I should take that back. It's not the beginning. The beginning is loving God. And God, if you love God properly, what does it say in the Bible? How do you abide in Christ's love?

Can you finish the sentence? How do you do it? How do you abide in Christ's love? By doing what he commands. And so if you're going to love God, you're going to read what he commands, and then do what he commands, and you're going to do it without partiality.

And only then can you love your neighbor as yourself. So the next time you hear a social justice warrior say, love your neighbor as yourself, make sure he's not using it as a squishy buzzword slogan. And make sure that he's applying it according to the way God would apply it.

Loving God first and not showing partiality because there is no partiality with God. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the Fight Laugh Feast Network.