Despite the unending news cycle, I’m still reflecting on Vice President JD Vance’s comments in his January 29 Fox News interview. He outlined a paradigm for love, saying, “There’s this… very Christian concept by the way, that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”

Politicians routinely make unethical decisions and unbiblical statements, and I don’t always write an essay about it. But when the Vice President shared Christian theology merely to underwrite an “America First” agenda that’s dismantling USAID, threatening ICE raids at schools and churches, and rejoicing over the potential of profiting off Gaza’s destruction – I felt compelled to say something.

Unchristlike theology hurts people. We are watching it happen in real time.

VP Vance’s quote is based on the 13th Century theologian Thomas Aquinas’ idea of ordis amoris (or “order of love”). Aquinas is one of the most influential Catholic theologians in church history, and Summa Theologiae is a great work. But there’s a list of problems with the Vice President’s particular use of this concept:

• The ordering of love is not inherently problematic, provided we protect that ordering from sin like selfishness, xenophobia, and greed. But the Vice President spoke not to further an ordered love for all but to justify a partisan platform that limits love for some. Pope Francis weighed in, writing that, “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
• Aquinas himself noted there are exceptions to this order based on need and urgency. Compassion does not always “belong first to your fellow citizen.”
• The 13th century was very different from the 21st century. Borders, citizenship, public policy, immigration, and relationships with non-citizens are not the same. Ordis amoris deserves careful reconsideration in a global world where we can discover a crisis within seconds, send financial aid within minutes, fly across the world in a day, and benefit generations through governmental assistance.
• Aquinas’ writings come from the tradition of Natural Law Ethics, which is just one framework within Christianity – not a universal Christian doctrine.
• Most importantly, Thomas Aquinas isn’t Jesus. As Kat Armas wrote in response to these comments, “Jesus never speaks of love as something to be rationed.”

Mere days into freezing billions of dollars of foreign aid, organizations across the globe were devastated. The New York Times reported that 434 out of 634 volunteer soup kitchens closed in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, Thai hospitals turned away refugees, and Ukrainian organizations providing maternal care and vaccinations have closed. Across the globe, USAID has provided billions of dollars of life-saving HIV medicine, natural disaster relief, disease control, and more. We ought to acknowledge that numbers can numb the impact of a tragedy. I can stomach an abstract number like 434, but try to imagine the empty stomachs that number represents. Please pause for a moment and feel it.

Jesus knew that we needed to imagine suffering to cultivate compassion, so instead of stating facts about need, he told the parable of the Good Samaritan. And yet, the Vice President speaks of Christian love while “passing by” the proverbial beaten man on Jericho Roads across the world. I can sense the Vice President searching for a biblical basis to justify efficiency over love, but he’ll find no verse for that.

Immigrants across this country are living in fear, all while the White House mocks the trauma of deportation by calling it “ASMR.” Parents are scared to bring their children to school due to threats of ICE raids in previously protected spaces. This is not a headline or a hypothetical. I’m talking about my neighbors, my own kids’ classmates. Do you know what it feels like for your life, your children, your wellbeing, and your very existence to be decided by executive order?

In the words of Howard Thurman, what does Jesus have to say to the person with their back against the wall? I believe that he offers a way of peace, justice, subversion of hierarchy, and love without limit. Jesus did not fall for nitpicking questions like, “Who is my neighbor?” Rather, he taught his followers that “your neighbor” includes whoever the most unlikely person is for you.

If government-issued papers are a deterrent to love, you are worshipping too small a god.

One of the most shocking moments during the new administration was when President Trump said that America should take ownership of Gaza and remove the two million Palestinians who live there. Following up his comments, he posted a bizarre AI-generated video of a “Trump Gaza.” When nationalism filters our compassion and we only “prioritize the rest of the world” as a last resort, we’ll find a way to justify the monetization of suffering. But what would a truly Christlike theology say?

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God’s image bearers are starving, scared, and hurt. My country has the money to help. But we are choosing indifference. Lord, have mercy.

God’s image bearers are trying their best to take care of their families and escape unlivable conditions. My country has an abundance of food, shelter, and opportunity. But we are choosing cruelty. Lord, have mercy.

God’s image bearers live in rubble. My country has tremendous influence to stand for the oppressed. But we are choosing to measure their land for renovations. Lord, have mercy.

The past six weeks have vaulted us far beyond a time to “agree to disagree.” We are swimming in deeper waters than policy arguments. When the powerful offer faulty theological foundations to justify our gain by their suffering, we need a prophetic witness to speak out. I’m declaring today with confidence that this theology and these actions are wrong.

In contrast to the Vice President’s comments, I am trying to dwell on the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1967, he wrote, “We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.”

In 1968, he said, “Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood.”

We need a new imagination, to see the world through a lens of relationship and mutuality rather than competition and suspicion.

A diseased imagination views the stranger as a threat.
A limited imagination fears there will not be enough.
A violent imagination normalizes cruelty.

But a redemptive imagination dares to see the foreigner as both family and friend.