Picking Sides

I’ve been thinking lately about how there is a difference between being a peacemaker and making peace.  You can make a desert and call it peace, but you weren’t a peacemaker.

There is this weird phenomenon these days where people will decide who is on their side and then feel comfortable bullying those people and belittling them and dismissing their concerns, because they aren’t our enemies, as if the Savior’s command was to love only our enemies.  In the old days we picked sides so we could attack the ones we labeled as not on our side.  The Savior rebuked that, so now we label people as on our side when we want to attack them and still feel morally twee.

By becoming a neighbor to the beaten jew, the Good Samaritan did not thereby cease to have obligations to his neighbors in Samaria.