Last weekend we hosted a one day “Jesus, Justice, and Poverty Conference”. The point of the conference is to give students a chance to begin to identify and experience the issues facing the city of san diego beyond its beautiful weather and coveted beaches. This year’s emphasis was on global migration, particularly the southern border. We sought to address the question “what does it mean to love our neighbor” particularly our neighbors to the south? With such a charged political topic, it is often times hard to enter into the subject itself with the eyes and ears of Jesus. The reality is, that this is more than an issue, it is people; fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, mothers, sons. And the heart of Jesus is that these people would be treated with the same level of dignity and humanity bestowed upon all of us, starting with restoring their voiceless voices and their untold stories. A group of students took a trip to the border to allow their eyes to be opened to the realities there. One student recounts his experience in these words, “it honestly felt like a zoo, only I didn’t know whether they were on display or I was on display…looking across that fence with other people looking in, a certain level of humanity seemed lost in the line between us.” Another student expresses her experience with these word, “we are trying so hard to keep them out, but really we’re locked in.” No matter what side of the political policy we fall, the call of the gospel is to restore humanity that has been lost, and in the process find that we are more human that we ever knew.
