If You'll Turn A Child Back Into the Night, You Can't Call Yourself A Christian

The photograph below, with credit to the Dallas Morning News in an opinion piece, depicts an 8 year-old child looking with some combination of angst and wonder at a United States Border patrolman as he is processed near McAllen, Texas. I lack a ready solution to what is a legitimate growing concern regarding the appropriate legal status of (and thus the fate of) undocumented children who enter the United States unaccompanied and often at the behest of parents and other family members who have already made the journey to the United States, either legally or illegally.I also lack, increasingly, a sincere religious identity other than Deism, although I still cling to Catholicism in some element of practice. But if agreements can be reached on basic definitions, I'll offer this quick and blunt syllogism:1. "Christians" are not just followers but indeed worshippers of the figure generally accepted to have been the itinerant rabbi Jesus, originally from the Roman province of Judea.2. "Worship" can be commonly understood to mean to aspire to be like, to imitate and struggle to emulate; at bottom to do what the worshipped object would do as much as humanly possible.3. Thousands of children every year are attempting the remarkably cruel, emotionally crippling and physically dangerous journey into the United States from Mexico and points south. They suffer all manner of thirst, hunger, exhaustion, fear, darkness, uncertainty, and still untold amounts of sexual exploitation and abuse. In most cases they have family already in the U.S. who have arranged for their transport in order for reunification. In some cases the border crossing is only one point on a trail of misery and hardship. Many children must travel thousands of miles beyond the border to rejoin loved ones, and that journey within the U.S. can be no less vicious and exploitive.4. Christianity within differing sects is by far the most popular American religion, with millions claiming America to be a "Christian nation."5. Many Americans, in some cases regardless of political affiliation and with some legitimate practical concerns, would see these children turned away from sanctuary in the world's richest nation. While perhaps not personally lacking compassion, some would nevertheless deny these children even processing in temporary detention centers.6. These people cannot call themselves Christians with any shred of sincerity or intellectual honesty.And what gives me the right to make this claim? Nothing, really. But I've yet to see a single interpretation with an iota of coherency that would allow the plain teachings of Jesus- as we know them in modern translations from the Gospels- to allow for the shunning of these children in need (or those accompanying them, for that matter, but especially them).I'm aware that tragic interpretations of Christianity have for centuries encouraged and embraced horrors from slavery to genocide. But I've never seen anything Jesus himself purportedly uttered that could ever be used to justify anything but welcoming these children -pawns in a miserable game of limited and lopsidedly distributed resources- with open arms. No matter if it's inconvenient, impractical, unwise, unfair even, or anything else.It's often irritating, and indeed sometimes far worse that that. Like millions before me, I've struggled with the clear demands of this same revolutionary, inscrutable, polarizing figure my entire sentient life. Although not Jesus himself, a Biblical author named James is credited with writing that religion undefiled before God is this: To attend to widows and orphans in their distress, and to remain unstained from the world.I've failed miserably at the second part of this command. My only hope, for whatever shadow of a Christian I may still be or eventually die as, is not to fail at the first.Regardless of the practical considerations.Regardless of the geopolitical implications.Regardless of the foolishness, recklessness, or even downright deception of any adult involved.If you will turn a child back into the night, you cannot call yourself a Christian.