Don’t be so sure Jesus is on your side when religion is used to draw lines against others

Photo: Gerald Farinas.

It strikes me, with the weight of my intersecting identities, that the most critical theological question of our time is not about what we believe, but who we exclude.

As a Presbyterian elder, I have taken vows to maintain the peace and purity of the Church, but I have learned that "purity" is too often code for uniformity, and "peace" is often a synonym for the comfort of the privileged.

The true call of my office is to the radical, messy inclusion exemplified by Christ.

The quote, "Every time we use religion to draw a line to keep people out, Jesus is with the people on the other side of that line" cuts through all our polite doctrinal defenses.

It asserts that the ultimate act of betrayal against the Gospel is not holding a different belief, but wielding the Church's authority as a weapon of exclusion. When we do that, we effectively lock Christ out of the sanctuary, because he has gone to stand with the rejected.

Echoes of empire and the perpetual foreigner

I carry the historical trauma of colonization in my heritage, a history where Christianity was tragically entangled with European imperial power.

The colonizer arrived with a cross and a system of racial hierarchy, drawing lines that declared my ancestors, my people, less than fully human, spiritually deficient, and culturally inferior.

Religion became the justification for theft, erasure, and violence. I know intimately that feeling of being on the "other side" of a line drawn by a majority that claims the sole possession of God’s truth.

This experience is sharpened by my reality as an Asian American in the United States.

In the current climate, political rhetoric has produced a complicated and often contradictory social dynamic.

We are told, in one breath, that studies show an increase in our acceptance or trust due to prevailing political narratives, yet in the next, we face the threat of xenophobia and suspicion.

We are simultaneously lauded as professionally successful and targeted as "perpetual foreigners." This forces us to navigate an uncertain ground of acceptance.

Even in moments of seeming societal embrace, the historical line of suspicion remains. This teaches me to be skeptical of any religious community that claims a full, untroubled sense of belonging. The line always threatens to reappear.

The sanctuary and the street

The deepest resonance of the quote comes from my experience as an LGBTQ person.

I have been told by people of faith, by leaders and communities, that my love, my identity, and my very personhood are sins that must stand outside the circle of God's grace. This is the clearest example of drawing a line in Christ’s name.

The pain of this exclusion is profound because it comes from the one place that promises unconditional love and shelter.

But in that pain, I found the truth of the quote. The moment the Church decided to formalize my exclusion, I found the Spirit, not in the empty space they reserved for me in the pew, but on the other side of that line, in the community, in the affirmation of fellow travelers, and in the quiet, fierce conviction that my identity is a gift, not a mistake.

The Gospel calls us to see that the human lines we draw, racial, national, sexual, or economic, are an offense to a God whose love is boundless.

My work as an elder is not to argue the validity of those lines, but to point to the one who is already dismantling them.

My vocation is to ensure that if there is a line of exclusion drawn in the Church, I will cross it and stand in solidarity with those who are pushed out, knowing that I will find Jesus there waiting for me.