When Christian Ethics is both Wisdom and Warning

Two quotations from two very different books, but insisting on similar ethical values as characteristic of faithful Christian obedience in following faithfully after Christ. The first expresses repentance for Christian failure to live these values, even to risk dying for them; the second states what should be obvious and demonstrable in a community claiming the name of Jesus

"Embedded in Christian faith is a compelling manifesto for resistance and rescue, and living power to motivate and sustain such behaviour. This manifesto and these resources are drawn not from the margins but from the living centre of Christian faith. Christians should have been able to see that the Jewish people are kin, not enemies; that persecuted ones must be sheltered, not turned away; that the policies of unjust government must be resisted, not acquiesced to; that racist ideology [is] incompatible with the Christian faith, not somehow complementary or identical; that every human life is equally precious, not racially graded in value; that the centre of the ministry and teaching of Jesus was compassionate love for all, even the least of these……"

(David Gushee, Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, pp. 185-6)