Render & Resist

Luke 10:29-37

29 But wanting to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

30 -37 Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he encountered robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by coincidence a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion,  and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you.’ Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands? And he said, “The one who showed compassion to him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”

“Who is my neighbor?” 

Such a simple question. Innocent on the surface. Yet Jesus sees the man’s heart — a heart looking for a boundary, a loophole, a way to limit love while still feeling righteous.

John Calvin notes that the lawyer already knows the command to love his neighbor; he quotes it perfectly. But he wants to define “neighbor” in a way that keeps his conscience clean while his compassion stays narrow.

That’s the temptation of easy Christianity — a faith that comforts but never challenges. And if that’s the version of faith we cling to, we have to ask whether we’re truly seeking to know and love God.

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a full day’s walk — seventeen miles of steep, dangerous terrain. Jesus chooses that road intentionally. The wounded man is far from home, and the Samaritan is even farther. By stretching the distance, Jesus stretches the definition of “neighbor.”

The priest and the Levite aren’t villains. They’re examples of how religious formation can harden the heart under the guise of holiness — a faith that stays safe, respectable, and unchallenged, a faith that walks past suffering because stopping would cost too much.

Enter the foreigner

To Jesus’ audience, the Samaritan was not just an outsider but a spiritual traitor — a people with a long history of opposing Jewish worship, corrupting the faith, and even harassing pilgrims on the road. If the priest and Levite represented everything holy and respectable, the Samaritan represented everything dangerous and defiling. He was, in their imagination, worse than the most maligned immigrant in today’s political rhetoric. And yet Jesus makes him the one who stops, sees, and shows mercy. In one stroke, Jesus shatters the lawyer’s attempt to limit love by choosing the very person his community had taught him to fear, distrust, and avoid.

Understanding The Argument

Before going any further, let me be clear about what I am not saying. A nation has the right to secure its borders. It has the right to enforce immigration laws. And those who commit violent crimes — rapists, murderers, traffickers — should be rightly imprisoned. None of this is in dispute. The question before us is not whether a country may enforce its laws, but whether Christians may ignore the suffering those laws sometimes create. Jesus’ parable does not ask whether the road should be made safer; it asks whether we will stop for the wounded lying on it.

As Christians, we are responsible not only to the laws of the land but to the higher law of God — a law that commands us to speak when those laws are carried out with brutality or injustice.

Micah 6:8 makes this unmistakably clear: we are called to do justice, to act on behalf of the vulnerable; to love mercy, cultivating compassion rather than searching for loopholes; and to walk humbly, refusing the self‑protective posture of the lawyer who wanted to limit love. Yet this verse is often invoked to defend ICE, as though justice and mercy were synonymous with border enforcement. 

The problem is not that these Christians affirm a nation’s right to secure its borders. The problem is that they frame the entire conversation around the three points I am not making, while choosing silence when it comes to the human rights abuses and constitutional violations carried out by ICE.

They dismiss the suffering as media exaggeration, political propaganda, or attacks on “their side,” and in doing so, they walk past the wounded on the road, convinced that holiness requires it.

Silence Isn’t Acceptable to God

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once reflected on this parable and said the church cannot simply “bandage the victims under the wheel,” but must also “jam a spoke in the wheel itself.” He saw what Jesus was teaching: compassion is not passive. It does not merely pity the wounded; it confronts the forces that keep producing wounded people.

The Samaritan steps between the victim and the system that made him a victim. Bonhoeffer understood that discipleship requires the same of us. We are not only called to comfort the harmed, but to resist the harm‑doer, especially when that harm is carried out under the banner of law, order, or national security.

These are the people lying on the side of the road today.  

Not hypotheticals. Not partisan talking points. Not “woke liberal narratives.” Real human beings whose suffering is documented in sworn affidavits, autopsy reports, and court filings.

There is Geraldo Lunas Campos, choked to death in ICE custody. His autopsy ruled the death a homicide by asphyxia, contradicting the agency’s initial claims.

There is the woman raped by an ICE contractor — her name withheld in court filings to protect her privacy — assaulted simply to see a picture of her daughter. 

A Challenge From Scripture

The word Luke uses for the Samaritan’s response is splagchnizomai — a Greek verb that means to be moved in the gut, shaken with compassion down in the deepest parts of oneself. It is the same word used of Jesus when He sees the crowds, the sick, the hungry, the lost. This is not soft sentiment. It is a visceral, costly, boundary‑breaking mercy that refuses to look away.

A Christian is free to believe that ICE has a legitimate mission. But a Christian is not free to suspend compassion. We are not free to ignore abuse because it comes from “our side.” We are not free to explain away suffering because it complicates our politics.

When we rush to defend power before we grieve for the wounded, we are no longer following Jesus — we are denying Him!

Political tribalism always tempts us to walk past the man in the ditch. If your first response is to question the source of the story, verses feel compassion for the to refuse compassion for the sake of political loyalty is not merely a moral failure; it is a denial of the One who had compassion on us. 

If you still find yourself resisting Jesus’ command to “Go and do likewise” when it comes to immigrants, then you need to reckon with the possibility that you are standing in the shoes of the priest or the Levite. Not because you are heartless, but because your formation has taught you to let political loyalty set the boundaries of love.

Love one another

Love neighbors

Love enemies

Check back later this week for a link to my article at The Libertarian Institute. A non-partisan look at how the Patriot Act and Institutional Failures throughout ICE have strained the spine of the Constitution.