Two recent news stories caught my attention.
The first was about the ongoing gerrymandering fight in Texas, and California’s counter-response through Proposition 50, which passed with strong support.
Gerrymandering — manipulating district boundaries to give one group a political advantage — has been a fixture of American politics since 1812, when Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry approved a district shaped like a salamander.
Phillip Thomas
Although redistricting began as a tool for fair representation, it often has devolved into a strategy of exclusion — one designed to protect power rather than serve justice.
The second story struck a more personal chord: The growing sentiment among some Republicans and evangelical Christians regarding food stamps and public assistance.
According to the USDA, 13.5% (18 million) of U.S. households experienced food insecurity in 2023 — up from 12.8% (17 million) in 2022.
Think about that: In the wealthiest nation on earth, 18 million households don’t know where their next meal will come from. That’s roughly the population of New York State going hungry.
In January 2024, homelessness climbed 18%, reaching 771,480 people. Add to that a Harvard study reporting 21% of U.S. adults feel lonely and disconnected from family, friends and community.
We’re a “developed” nation, yet the hunger for food, shelter and belonging keeps deepening. If it’s this severe here, imagine what it looks like elsewhere.
“Political gerrymandering and rising social isolation seem unrelated. But they share a root: the redrawing of boundaries for self-interest.”
At first glance, political gerrymandering and rising social isolation seem unrelated. But they share a root: the redrawing of boundaries for self-interest.
There’s another gerrymander — one far subtler and more spiritual. We’ve gerrymandered our hearts.
We’ve drawn invisible lines around our lives so the people we encounter look like us, think like us and live like us — excluding those we’d rather avoid.
True Christian community once lived at the intersection of geography, philosophy and economy — people near us who shared our beliefs and our comfort level. Yet this “community” often functions as a social fortress.
Many of us in the middle class have mastered the art of rationalizing avoidance. We produce convincing explanations for why crossing specific lines is “impractical,” even when it contradicts the very gospel we profess.
We congratulate ourselves for being good neighbors when our “neighborhoods” are carefully self-selected.
Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan explodes our curated comfort zones. In that story, “neighbor” isn’t proximity or preference — it’s need.
The priest and the Levite saw the wounded man but passed by. They could justify their inaction — touching a corpse or an open wound would make them unclean. But Jesus doesn’t let them — or us — off the hook. He reframes neighborliness as engagement, despite convenience and mercy, despite fear.
“What if the very people we avoid are the ones God has placed in our path?”
What if the very people we avoid are the ones God has placed in our path?
Jeremiah and Ezekiel warned of this spiritual blindness: “O foolish and senseless people… who have eyes to see but see not, ears to hear but hear not.”
We’ve chosen a new form of deafness borne of comfort, not ignorance.
The ability to gerrymander our neighborhoods — both physically and emotionally — is a privilege Jesus never offered his followers. When Jesus was asked, in Mathew 22, what the greatest commandment (singular) in the law was, he responded by saying, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
This came as a single package. Jesus did not gerrymander the greatest commandment, and he has not given us the luxury to do so.
He calls us beyond the safe lines, into a world that is crying, hurting and waiting for us to show up. He is setting the example for us. Philippians 2 reminds us: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing … .”
Is it easy? Absolutely not.
But the promise remains — Ephesians 2:14: “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”
This is the Gospel: Reconciliation, boundary-breaking, the dismantling of walls.
This week, notice one person you usually overlook:
- The homeless veteran at the intersection.
- The exhausted single mother in the checkout line.
- The elderly neighbor whose blinds never open.
See them — truly see them — as Jesus does.
Because the gospel never was meant to be gerrymandered, distorted or manipulated.
Phillip Thomas, originally from India, now makes America his home, along with his wife of 29 years and his three children, in the Philadelphia area. He works for a global bank and continues to wrestle with his faith and Christianity.