From: Cynthia McMillin
Columbus
Michael Greven deserves a thousand orchids for his June 10 letter condemning the cruel practice of separating parents and children at our border. America’s outcry against this abusive practice should be deafening.
My fellow citizens should dig deep and engage the kindness and empathy for which Americans are justly admired. What would it take to leave behind one’s language, customs, friends and relatives to make a dangerous journey to a strange country, hoping for mercy from the officials of that country? Would it take starvation? Terror? Oppression? Torture? Some combination of those horrors? What was the breaking point that made our own ancestors flee their country and come to the United States?
Now, imagine the trauma of making that journey, only to be torn from one’s family. Imagine the trauma of the children taken away and warehoused, not knowing when or if they might be reunited with their parents.
The attorney general trotted out a verse from the New Testament’s Letter to the Romans to justify this policy. Perhaps he really believes that obedience to the government is the major message of the Bible. The message I’ve read over and over in both the New and Old Testaments admonishes us to welcome the stranger, lend a hand to the poor, aid the oppressed. Most famously, in Matthew 25, Jesus tells us that when we aid the “least of these,” we have done so for him.
Let us be loud and clear in our protest. If we look at these tragic images and shrug, if we countenance this cruel policy, America has, indeed, lost its very soul.
