Dear friends,

Are you also troubled by the way “others” are being talked about and treated today?

In recent days, the president moved to rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of

War. This expensive move sends a message of hostility near and far. He then announced a “Chipocalypse,” comparing ICE’s “war” against our undocumented neighbors in Chicago to dropping napalm on people in the Vietnam War. (His words “I love the smell of deportations in the morning” was a reference to the infamous movie line “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”) Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has defended ICE stopping people in L.A. simply on the basis of their ethnicity or appearance. This is racial profiling that none of us would want to be subjected to.

There is such a great need to revive seeing “others” as our neighbors today. God is calling us to reclaim loving our neighbors as the heart of a faithful ethic. This courageous love is the ancient way to a better future of true dignity, security, and peace for all people. It’s moral sanity.

In this disturbing time, my book Reviving the Golden Rule: How the Ancient Ethic of Neighbor Love Can Heal the World is less than a month away. The audiobook is also now available for pre-order on Amazon, pre-save on Spotify, and wherever you enjoy audiobooks. I pray this book does exactly what its title suggests: help us revive the golden rule in our time of escalating othering.

In the coming weeks, I’ll share brief meditations from Reviving the Golden Rule that I wrote for Red Letter Christians. I hope these tiny tastes nourish your appetite for the full feast in this book and the movement it traces. I’ll also share links to conversations on the book that offer a deeper dive now.

Church at the Crossroads

Before sharing today’s meditation, I want to invite you to register for Church at the Crossroads, which is happening this Thursday to Saturday (September 11-13).

This conference is a gathering of Christians seeking to reckon with Israel’s devastation of Gaza and to bear witness to Jesus’ call to the cruciform way of peacemaking. The conference will be led by Palestinian Christian leaders like Rev. Munther Isaac, alongside pastors and peacemakers from across North America. Bittersweetly, in-person tickets are sold out, but you can still register for the live stream and post-conference video access.

The conference’s executive committee kindly asked me to serve as the lead writer for the conference’s public statement. This statement seeks to respond to two public letters from our Palestinian and Middle Eastern Christian siblings. We hope our response serves as a wide-reaching call to western Christians to reclaim Jesus’ costly way of peacemaking in the face of our Palestinian neighbors’ devastation.

I will read this statement at the close of the conference on Saturday. It will then become publicly available for you to read and sign online. Please check the conference website Saturday if you would like to sign your name to this prophetic call for neighbor love in Palestine-Israel. We would be very grateful for your solidarity in saying yes to Christ’s call.

A New Movement

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies…that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” – Jesus (Matthew 5:43-45)

Labeling others as “enemies” is potent. It fuels fear and can cement people’s loyalty to leaders who promise protection. But Jesus did the opposite. He taught, “Love your enemies.” With this call, he cut through religious debates about who qualifies as a “neighbor” – as worthy of love. Jesus said to love everyone, including the “others” we feel most justified to hate. Why? Because love is the heart of God for all of us.

Who are you conditioned to see as an “enemy”? How will you open your heart to them today?

This meditation was originally published by Red Letter Christians on August 12, 2025. Dig deeper into the neighbor love movement with my new book Reviving the Golden Rule: How the Ancient Ethic of Neighbor Love Can Heal the World (IVP Academic), available for pre-order now.