Day 32—Thursday, March 26

Ecclesiastes 12:11-12

The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one shepherd. Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.

I have a group of friends from my hometown - Camden, New York. We have all been friends since 2002. We first developed our friendship by playing a Star Wars role playing game (It’s like Dungeons and Dragons but easier). Though life has taken us all our different ways, we have always stayed in contact- first with email chains and visits back to the “village” (Camden is proudly a village, not a town) and then for the past 15 years our lives have been linked through a text thread. We talk nearly every day about everything ranging from updates on life and family to any other thoughts in the zeitgeist.

When we first became friends, I was the only one to belong to a church and have a religious upbringing. However, in the past five years, almost everyone in the group has become religious.

One who started as an atheist is now an orthodox Christian. The rest were more or less agnostic, but now have moved to a form of Christian Nationalism.

This has led to many theological jousting matches. The biggest one has been about Ordo Amoris. This is the idea of an Order of love, family, and community first and then fellow citizens.

The main argument revolving around this idea is who should we help as Christians? The Orthodox friend has remained silent on this issue while the Christian Nationalists have been vocal about how they should focus on God, family, and country. Anybody outside of that is not their concern. They only have so much time and resources … and God can’t expect us to save the world…Especially when (in their minds) the rest of the world is so secular, Muslim, and evil.

My joust back is the parable of the Good Samaritan. Even someone considered an enemy is your neighbor. God’s love is bigger than any of us and we should do our mortal best to emulate that love.

The common retort then is “Empathy will destroy western culture.”

There is very little I can say at that point.

I’m sure that many of you would think that my friends are horrible misguided people. Nevertheless, let's take a second to see what we can learn from this. They are attracted to these teachings because it makes them feel good. Ordo Amoris removes one of the pressures of being a Christian (Loving our enemy) and replaces it with a more palatable teaching of loving only people who look and act like you, that’s much easier and feels really good; I mean wouldn’t it be easier if everyone looked and acted the same (Sarcasm)!

Now before we condemn my friends to hell, let's think how many times we do this but maybe on a different scale and how we rationalize it. I struggle to love people who are lazy, Hard work is such a value of mine that when I see someone not working, I immediately group them as a “Bad Person,” in my mind. However, is this because I’m scared about not working hard enough myself, am I projecting this fear on them? Or have I been conditioned by society to see peoples’ inherent worth only in what work they can produce? It feels good to think I’m better than someone else, it’s not fun to admit to, but we all do it, we are all human.

What does this have to do with our passage? My Christian Nationalist friends do not attend any church, they receive their religious schooling from YouTube, podcasters, billionaires, and political figures. These “influencers” don’t need any schooling, they just need to present a good feeling argument. My friends’ thoughts for Ordo Amoris don’t come from the one true shepherd, but from these “influencers” to pursue their own selfish ends.

Let us be careful who we listen to. God doesn’t sound like the world around us.

-Will Smith