I grew up in a small Southern town in what I lovingly call L.A., Lower Arkansas, where everyone knew everyone, or at least something about them, and if they didn’t, they might make it up. Alan Jackson played through grandma’s speakers, and if you got in trouble at school, your momma knew before you got home. We loved Jesus. The harder question was whether we loved like Jesus. My questions were rarely popular. Too often I heard, “We don’t ask questions,” “I’ll pray for you,” or my personal favorite, “God bless you, Darlin’.”

One of my earliest memories of difference happened in second grade, when our teacher said a new student was joining our class and that he “looked different,” but we shouldn’t treat him differently. At seven, I didn’t understand why that needed to be said. I was confused not by him, but by why adults prepared us to see difference before teaching us to see people. We weren’t born believing certain children were “other.” We learned it quietly, through tones, warnings, and fears adults carried.

Years later, a friend mentioned she had a crush on another girl. After she left the locker room, several girls said they weren’t comfortable changing around her anymore. At twelve, I couldn’t understand why who someone liked made them unworthy of dignity, and I learned that doing what you believe is right can cost your social acceptance.

By high school, the injustice around me had become too loud to ignore, so I transferred to a school in a bigger city, hoping for something more fair and welcoming. Instead, I learned that changing schools doesn’t eliminate injustice; it just changes what it looks like. At a gas station, a cashier watched my friend’s every step and barely looked at me while she handed me my change. Prejudice doesn’t belong to one color, town, denomination, or political party. It is a human problem.

Years later, I met a father accused of medical neglect because his son hadn’t received dental care. On paper, it looked simple; in person, it wasn’t. He wasn’t careless. He was terrified. His son was a U.S. citizen; he wasn’t. He feared that taking his child to the dentist might expose his immigration status and lead to separation. What looked like avoidance was a father trying to protect the one relationship he couldn’t bear to lose.

Fear can look like neglect when no one asks what a person is afraid of. Poverty, immigration status, language barriers, trauma, shame, and isolation can turn ordinary systems into places that feel dangerous. Scripture tells us to love the foreigner as ourselves and speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. That doesn’t mean ignoring a child’s needs. It means refusing to reduce a frightened parent to a label.

Not long ago, I almost peeled a simple “Ally” sticker off my laptop because I became aware of who might be watching. For a split second, I wanted to hide it. Then God stopped me with a question: You can hide your laptop. What about the people who can’t hide who they are?

An LGBTQ+ person doesn’t get to zip themselves into a backpack every time they fear rejection, judgment, ridicule, or exclusion. Many have spent years hiding parts of themselves just to feel safe. I wasn’t convicted for supporting LGBTQ+ people. I was convicted because fear had spoken louder than love. That is where moral juxtaposition shows up: the tension between conviction and compassion, truth and grace, holiness and humility.
Jesus never sacrificed truth to love, nor love to truth. He moved toward the people everyone else moved away from.

Respect shouldn’t end where consequences begin. If the only time we use someone’s name or pronouns correctly is when a policy requires it, that is not respect; it is compliance. Love doesn’t wait for rules, permission, or proof that someone has earned dignity.
We also need to remember that biblical terminology is not the same as the terminology used today to oppress LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, and other marginalized groups:

Passages such as Leviticus 18:22; Leviticus 20:13; Romans 1; 1 Corinthians 6; and 1 Timothy 1 are often used to shame or exclude LGBTQ+ individuals today, but in context they addressed ritual purity laws, temple prostitution, idolatrous sexual practices, power-imbalanced relationships, and exploitation, not modern concepts of sexual orientation, gender identity, or loving, consensual same-sex relationships.

Deuteronomy 28:43 is sometimes misused to justify fear or exclusion of immigrants, but it was not a command to mistreat foreigners. It was a covenant warning about what would happen if Israel abandoned justice and compassion, while the Torah repeatedly commands God’s people to protect, welcome, and love the foreigner.

When we force ancient texts into modern categories, we risk using Scripture to harm people Jesus would have moved toward. The Bible was not written with today’s sociological, psychological, or identity-based language in mind, and modern oppression often relies on terminology the biblical authors never used or meant.
Regardless of where someone lands on Scripture’s complex passages about sexuality or gender, one truth remains: every person is made in God’s image, loved by God, invited to Christ, and every follower of Jesus is commanded to love. If my theology gives me permission to dehumanize someone, I have misunderstood the heart of Christ.

The greatest transformation God worked in me wasn’t changing a sticker. It was changing my heart. Following Jesus has never been about finding people worthy of love. It is about remembering that none of us were, and He loved us anyway. Love your neighbor as yourself. Simple to read, much harder to live. But God didn’t create us to reject us. He created us to reconcile us to Himself and to one another.

Lord, replace our fear with perfect love. Teach us to see every person through Your eyes. And may the world recognize us, not because we won every argument, but because we loved like Jesus. Amen.