In several regards I don’t suppose I’m especially different than most. One of them, I’m sure I share with most: being visited at my home by a couple of smartly dressed young men or women; perfectly creased and pressed black trousers or skirt, a starched white shirt and black tie, and haircuts trimmed so that not a hair is astray. And their most important mission is to save my soul, introduce or reintroduce me to Jesus.

As my experiences here have been numerous, the following narrative is a generic compilation retelling.

Knock, knock. So I answer the door. “Yes;” a question as well as a one-word rhetorical statement.

One of them begins. “Good morning sir, how are you today?” As with my terse note, his is less a genuine inquiry on my state of being as it is a clichéd way to get a conversation started.

“Know what? I’m glad you stopped by. I’ve read the Bible a little . . .”

“Glad to meet a fellow Christian . . .”

I let that pass unanswered. No reason to get their ears cocked with an announcement that I’m an atheist. “Well, I’m a little confused. Could either of you explain the moral behind the Parable of the Good Samaritan?”

“Sure. Be happy to.” One of the two then summarizes Luke 10:25-37 as “ . . . helping a stranger.”

“Hmmm. Let me think about that. What else do you have?”

This submission is only tangentially related to what else my visitors might have offered, but to a current issue that is absolutely related to the moral behind the Good Sam parable. Parenthetically, One, the young men could not have been farther from the fact, and Two, I’ve yet to hear anyone tersely summarize what the Parable is actually all about; “terse,” as in just one word. However I won’t betray it here, the answer lies in the final question Jesus asked in this episode. Read it for yourself.

Back to the HE-Lou Dobbs screed. I don’t care who your parents are. Or your kids. Or your siblings, or neighbors or associates. If they buy into any of this, any of it: a single syllable, they are the lowest of the low bigots; not much elevated from others in different times and different lands — those who lynched, those who burned a family out of its home, those who filled mass graves with human beings they murdered, or those who merely stood by and cheered on the carnage. As iniquitous, or worse, they are hypocrites.

Here’s why.

Let’s stipulate to the proposition there are in fact a number hovering somewhere between 12 and 20 million illegals currently in the United States.

First of all, who are they? Not generally; specifically, who are they? How do you know? Because they are brown? Because they speak Spanish? Because they pay for their groceries and other services with cash? Is that your means of identification?

If those compose your soul means of identification, how will you prove it? “HALT! Papers please!” If that’s where you really want to go, please go somewhere else: that is not America. And if it is, or is to be, be very careful with what you wish for. By definition, that path could as well be turned against YOU. Checkpoints. Stop and detain without probable cause. Perhaps even frisk . . . at whatever whim strikes the one making the stop. And how deep — full body cavity? — will that frisk proceed?

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