And Who Is My Neighbor?
Walking in the midst of ICE Raids, Riots, and the question of Justice
A Note on Scope
This essay is not an argument about immigration law, political affiliation, or national policy. It is not written from expertise in sociology, law, or government. It is written from the ground I know: faith, scripture, and the moral responsibility we carry as neighbors. This is a reflection on what it means to love in the face of complexity, to respond to human suffering not with certainty, but with presence. I believe justice begins not in systems, but in souls and that how we respond to the wounded in our path says everything about the kind of people we are becoming.
This essay may be sticky for some of you. I desire deeply to make space at the table for all beliefs, experiences, and opinions and, also, I believe it is equally important to share my own even though some may disagree. If you’re a consistent reader, first thank you, and second, I hope at this point, you’ve been able to come to know my heart in writing is to bring healing to wounded places. If you’re new here, welcome. I hope you’ll find this space inviting and thought provoking.
This essay will be heavily outlined by Scripture, my belief in the Christian God, and the outworking of my faith. I feel it is important to give you a heads up as it is different than other essays I’ve written for Innkeeper.
The Question Beneath the Noise
Our current cultural moment is striking a chord in my inner world. At the time of writing this, LA is rioting, social media is rapidly responding to reports of ICE activity in our local cities, and people are being taken forcefully and removed from our country. These are just the facts of waking up on this Tuesday morning, and you are entitled to your opinion about each of them. Still, what remains is that tensions are high, people are being harmed, and there is a significant question that is confronting each of us individually.
It’s the question that has confronted people since the beginning of time: What do I owe the suffering of another person?
In Luke 10, a man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. When Jesus responds with the command to love God and love one’s neighbor, the man doesn’t ask how. He asks who. Who is my neighbor? It’s a question that echoes through every border wall, every eviction notice, every protest line, every quietly justified indifference. Who counts? Who matters? Who do I have to care about?
Jesus answers not with a thesis, but with a story.
At the center of that story is not a religious leader, not a political figure, not a person of power or popularity, but a man most listeners would have considered the enemy. A Samaritan, hated and dismissed by those who claimed righteousness, becomes the one who crosses the road, binds wounds, and offers dignity and care.
The Samaritan becomes the one who sees, and it is in this seeing that he responds to the need of the wounded man. He lifts him onto his own animal and takes him to an inn, promising the innkeeper that he will repay whatever is spent to care for the man.
The innkeeper, while only briefly mentioned, represents what Innkeeper was always meant to be, a place where healing continues, where the wounded are welcomed, where no one has to justify their worthiness before they receive rest.
This vision of hospitality is not just about comfort. It is about justice.
What Is Justice?
Before we go any further, it’s important to pause and ask, what do we mean by justice? For some, it conjures images of a courtroom: legal codes, punishment, order. For others, it’s a political buzzword, worn thin by overuse and partisan spin. But at its heart, justice is something far more ancient and relational.
In Scripture, justice is often tied to the Hebrew word mishpat, which refers to giving people what they are due, whether protection, care, or accountability. It is rooted in right relationship. In the Christian tradition, justice is not detached objectivity; it is covenant faithfulness. It is seeing each person as made in the image of God and acting accordingly.
Justice is not primarily about punishment. It is about restoration. It is the persistent movement toward wholeness, not just for individuals, but for communities, systems, and the world. It is about lifting the lowly, challenging the powerful, and bringing the margins to the center. And often, it is inconvenient, because it asks something from us.
Real justice disrupts the status quo. It confronts our comfort. It doesn’t wait for consensus to do what is right. It costs us something. Time. Attention. Resources. Proximity. Justice, then, is not something we delegate to governments or nonprofits. It is something we each must choose to participate in. Radical, unearned, indiscriminate justice. But not justice in the courtroom or legislative hall. Not policy-driven, system-focused justice, though those things matter. No, this is justice on a human scale. This is the justice of two hands, binding wounds. The justice of choosing to get personally involved in someone else’s pain.
And here’s where the tension lies: we live in a time where justice is too often flattened into slogans and sides. It has become a matter of teams, of who we’re with and who we’re against. Social media amplifies outrage. News outlets package pain into digestible bias. We are invited to care more about being right than being near.
But justice, in its most sacred form, is proximity.
It’s stepping toward someone, not away from them. It’s seeing the wound instead of the politics, the humanity instead of the category. And that is incredibly hard. Because when you get close, you begin to see the things that don’t fit neatly into your worldview. You see the ICE agent who carries regret. You see the undocumented mother who fears for her children. You see the protestor with a story. You see the policy-maker with a complicated heart.
None of this excuses wrongdoing. None of this erases the real harm being done. But it does mean that our call to justice must begin not with outrage, but with hospitality.
Hospitality is not just about setting a table. It is about making room.
None of us can carry everything. And we aren’t meant to.
But we can carry something. We can cross one road. We can make one space. We can open one door.
The invitation to justice isn’t about exhausting ourselves trying to fix the world. It’s about faithfully showing up in the places we’re planted, with eyes open, hands ready, and hearts willing to be changed.
It is about saying, your pain has a place here. Your voice is welcome. Your story matters. It is about crossing the road when the crowd says stay put. It is about letting your resources, your time, your money, your safety, your comfort, become instruments of healing. Not because you’re a savior, but because you’ve come to believe that the suffering of another human being matters more than your convenience.
And so, justice starts not with a program, but with a presence. Not with a system, but with a seat.
Becoming a Neighbor
That’s why these words from Princess Mononoke have been echoing in my mind this week:
"You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two."
This is not an excuse for inaction. This is not moral neutrality. This is the hard and holy work of being the kind of person who refuses to be consumed by hatred, even in the pursuit of good. It is a commitment to seeing clearly, to acknowledging complexity, and to moving toward people, not just causes. And while I will regularly push back on the idea of balance, I believe these words hold a deep truth for those willing to listen.
Because if we’re only fighting for justice for our people, our side, our ideology, then we’re not fighting for justice at all. We’re fighting for preference. And preference masquerading as justice always leaves someone behind.
Innkeeper was never meant to be a place of preference. It was meant to be a place of presence.
A place for the wanderer.
A table for the community.
A retreat for the heart.
Justice, as I understand it now, is less about having the right answers and more about becoming the kind of person who keeps crossing the road. The kind of person who sees the wounds before they ask about the circumstances. The kind of person who says, “You belong here,” before they’ve finished forming their opinion.
And here’s the wild, countercultural part of all this: Jesus never actually defines who a neighbor is.
He doesn’t list the criteria. He doesn’t draw the borders. Instead, he flips the question entirely. After telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus asks the lawyer: "Which of these three was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"
The lawyer answers, "The one who showed him mercy."
Jesus replies, "Go and do likewise."
It’s subtle, but essential: the question is no longer "Who is my neighbor?" The question is, Will you be one?
To the stranger. To the wounded. To the inconvenient. To the ICE agent. To the undocumented. To the other.
Hospitality is the answer to that question. Hospitality is justice embodied. It is the antidote to a world obsessed with proving its righteousness. Because hospitality doesn’t need to win. It just needs to open the door.
In moments like this, I return to words that echo across generations, not because they offer policy, but because they offer clarity. One of those voices is Charlie Chaplin’s, from his speech in the 1940 film The Great Dictator. Though spoken in another era, in another crisis, they still ring true today. This excerpt reminds me that justice is not just about law or leadership, it’s about choosing humanity in the face of dehumanization.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone—if possible—Jew, Gentile, Black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness—not by each other’s misery… We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.”
I don’t always know how to say it better than that. But I do know I want to live in a way that makes those words true. That makes room. That insists on kindness. That crosses the road.
So, I don’t have a neat bow to tie for this article. I don’t have policy recommendations. I don’t have a call to action that fits on a t-shirt.
I just have this hope: that as we all walk the road of life, we would become the kind of people who no longer ask “Who is my neighbor?” and instead become neighbors ourselves.
People of extravagant hospitality.
People with eyes unclouded by hate.
People who choose to see.
Because on the path of life, we’re either concerned about justice for everyone or for no one. There is no such thing as justice for a few. To say you care about justice only in certain places, for certain people, under certain conditions, is to misunderstand justice altogether. Justice, in its truest form, is inconvenient. It stretches the borders of our comfort and disrupts the tidy boundaries we draw around who deserves our care.
The man who asked Jesus “Who is my neighbor?” wasn’t looking for a lesson in love. He was looking for a clean-cut process. He wanted to draw a line, to create a boundary around his moral obligation. And Jesus, in telling the story of the Good Samaritan, obliterated that line.
This is what Innkeeper is committed to becoming. A space where the wounded don’t need credentials to rest. A reminder that while the world debates who deserves compassion, there are still places that simply offer it.
We may not have influence over policy or power. But we do have tables. We do have stories. We do have the ability to say, again and again, “You are welcome here.”
The justice of the gospel is disruptive, humbling, and expansive. It doesn’t define who qualifies as a neighbor. It asks: Will you be one?
May we be those who cross the road.
May we become the kind of people who refuse to draw lines around our compassion.
May we build inns of refuge in a world that is far too comfortable leaving the wounded behind.
A Closing Word for the Road
The path of life is uneven and unpredictable. Some of us are walking it with a steady gait. Some of us are limping. Some of us have been left on the side of it, bruised and ignored. And some of us, myself included at times, have crossed to the other side and kept walking.
But this road is not just a symbol. It is an invitation.
To follow Jesus is to walk the road differently. It is to notice the wounded. To resist the instinct to justify our distance. To cross lines, not to erase difference, but to insist on shared dignity. And to do it not as saviors, but as neighbors.
Fear will try to convince you that compassion is dangerous. That if you move too close, you might lose something, your safety, your clarity, your certainty. And in some ways, it’s true. Justice is costly. Hospitality is vulnerable. But love has always required risk.
You might not have all the right words. You might offend. You might have to unlearn and apologize. But love moves anyway. And courage, in the Kingdom of God, isn’t the absence of fear, it’s proximity in the presence of it.
You do not need to change the world to be faithful. You just need to open your eyes. Cross the road. Play the innkeeper. Make space at your table.
Because justice, in the end, is not a theory. It is a life. It is love that moves. Love that spends. Love that shows up even when it’s costly, even when it's complicated, even when it’s not convenient.
So let us go and do likewise. Not because we must prove we are right. But because we believe no one should be left on the side of the road.
Good luck out there,
-Charlie