The Gospel and the Other: Preaching in an Age of "Us vs. Them"

When conflict and division are driving both politics and media (including social media), the contrast between the way of the world and the way of Jesus stands out more than ever. How can pastors, tasked with sharing his way with their communities, teach “love your neighbor” in a way that transforms culture? 

Let me offer two suggestions based on my book Reviving the Golden Rule. First, we look honestly at culture. Second, we follow Jesus’ courageous example. 

Who is the "Other"?

I imagine that some readers may get skeptical when they read about “othering.” It may sound overly academic or maybe even like it requires a specific political orientation. However, it is a really helpful idea for thinking about Jesus’ teaching on love, so I hope that you stick with me.

When I say “othering,” I am talking about a tendency to see a group of “other” people as unrelated to us or less than ourselves. It accompanies a sense of separation or superiority to “them,” often referring to them as a lump-sum “they.” And othering tends to go with perceived differences in politics, religion, ethnicity, etc.  

If it were just about labeling differences, it might be innocuous. But it cuts off our care for others, and, historically, has been used to legitimize violence. To see how this is possible, when you watched the Lord of the Rings movies, did you chuckle when Legolas and Gimli had their killing-count competition? Why did slaughtering Orcs entertain rather than unsettle? Because we don’t feel connected to the Orcs or see them as equals. Their grief doesn’t grieve us. They are “other” than us.

It’s one thing when it is a fictional Orc. It is a serious matter when this distance creeps into our perception of other humans, numbing us to their grief, their suffering. If we have othered someone, we’re not moved much, if at all, when their families are separated, their children suffer, or even when their whole society is devastated. Ultimately, othering becomes eliminationist: it persuades us that “we” can only truly flourish if “they” are defeated. Until then, you can’t have peace. It’s all-or-nothing, “us” versus “them.”

It is a tell-tale sign that someone is “othering” someone when a leader refers to whole groups of people as “enemies,” “animals,” or “monsters.” Unfortunately, this rhetoric is being normalized today. Recently, at an ostensibly Christian gathering, the American president declared, “I hate my opponents, and I don't want what's best for them." The reception was almost as troubling as the words: the audience laughed.

In their powerful 2024 book Belonging without Othering, John A. Powell and David Menendian name our challenge: “the problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of ‘othering.’ …We currently inhabit a world that is nominally dictated by othering.” Late in 2025, it’s hard to argue with that.

Neighbor-Love is Anti-Othering

Loving our neighbors as ourselves is the opposite of othering – in fact, it is its abolition. 

Neighbor love means seeing and treating other people as morally connected to us and equally precious in value. It’s far more than warm fuzzies for people we like or random kindness for strangers. It’s an intentional, active commitment to overcome othering. This love sees all people as if their lives bear God’s image, even in our differences and disagreements. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you can’t other them. If you other them, you aren’t loving them.

If othering is our time’s problem, then neighbor love is the healing medicine we need. So, how do we teach it in a transformative way? 

Taking Jesus' Teaching Seriously 

We have no better model than Jesus himself. Jesus taught with authority in word and action. His life, ministry, death, and resurrection bear witness to what it means to love our neighbors. To preach neighbor love is to call people not simply to feel compassion but to follow Jesus’ own example.

But what would it look like to take Jesus seriously and teach neighbor love like he did? The answer may be surprising, even to us Christians. 

An exercise might help. Make a quick list. Who is "other" to your congregation? How about to you? This calls for honesty. Who are the people whose hopes, fears, and pain don’t seem to matter quite as much as “ours.” Are they undocumented immigrants, vulnerable to exploitation and deportation? Are they transgender people, often vilified in politics and religion? Perhaps they’re Palestinian people in the crossfire of violence and often disregarded or even demonized?

These are commonly "othered" people in our culture. But before those whose politics are more on the right write this off as hopelessly biased or those on the left pat themselves on the back—othering is not only a problem on one side of politics.

Though right-leaning politicians have made "othering" a political tool, it is not restricted to the right. There's plenty of humor on the left that treats all rural white Americans as stupid, cruel, and racist, just "a basket of deplorables." The political reason is exactly the same on the left as it is on the right. It's easier to get people angry when “they” are an enemy to be defeated rather than neighbors to be persuaded, indeed, loved.

Whoever your congregation (and perhaps you) are most likely to see as “other,” imagine preaching a sermon that presents these people in particular, the most othered for your congregation, not as a problem to manage or an object for conversion, but as an embodiment of God’s will and eternal life. Picture yourself standing in your church and telling a story that spotlights them as a model of neighbor love. You conclude, “Go and do likewise.” 

Would that be uncomfortable? Most likely. Yet, how often do we speak about neighbor love in general terms rather than specific ones—avoiding rather than confronting the discomfort of addressing othering in our own community. But avoidance allows othering to persist, even as we endorse “love your neighbor” in the abstract.

The heart of neighbor love is not the sentimental niceness of abstraction. It’s the willingness to confront and overcome the specific othering that separates us. 

And Jesus did precisely that.

Jesus' Parable that Flipped Othering on its Head

We see this in Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Have you ever thought about the courage it took to tell this parable?

In Jesus’ culture, Samaritans were intensely othered. They were ethnic outsiders, despised by many Jews for mixing with the foreign occupiers. They were also political rivals, cast as enemies because of a long history of conflict. And they were religious heretics, condemned for false worship and banned from the temple. To honor a Samaritan was to transgress these sacrosanct boundaries of Jesus’ culture. According to John’s Gospel, many Jews wouldn’t even touch something that a Samaritan had touched (see John 4:9).  

Now, try to re-hear Jesus’ familiar teaching on neighbor love with fresh ears. 

A religious leader comes to Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” When questioned, they agree that loving God completely and loving our neighbor as ourselves is the way.  

But the religious leader asks another question: “And who is my neighbor?” He’s expecting Jesus to endorse the othering mindset. He wants Jesus to affirm that some people are “neighbors” – morally connected, equally precious – but others are not.  

Jesus does the opposite. He tells a provocative story about a Samaritan who embodied practical love for a victim of violence after the paradigmatic insiders (Jewish and religious officials) walked by “on the other side.” Jesus then asks, “Which one was a neighbor?” The man couldn’t even bring himself to say, “The Samaritan.” He only begrudgingly answers, “The one who had mercy.” Jesus responds, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:36-37). 

Jesus didn’t avoid the othering in his community—in the hearts of not just his questioner but all his listeners. Instead, he confronted it creatively, lifting up the dignity of the other. This wasn’t a gimmick. It was the othering-abolishing heart of Jesus’ teaching: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies… so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45, NIV; see also Luke 6:35). Jesus honored the Samaritan precisely because he was othered. This choice challenged his listeners to face their othering and calibrate their love to our Father’s scale. 

With this teaching, Jesus changed culture forever. “Samaritan” shifted from being an insult for an enemy to becoming an expression of respect for an exemplar of love. Then, it was unimaginable. Today, it’s almost cliche.   

Counting the Cost 

If Jesus is our guide, then making neighbor love come alive today demands a similar courage. It demands that we preach and practice in ways that name the other and, more radically, that honor the other’s dignity.

Of course, this isn’t easy or safe. It will unsettle some people. Unsurprisingly, Jesus got labeled a “Samaritan” and “demon-possessed” (John 8:48). When we love the other, we often get othered ourselves. But if we are to follow Jesus faithfully, this is the way. Indeed, if we’re not being accused of loving too “radically,” something might be wrong. 

For pastors, this begins with imagination. What if we began preaching neighbor love by pointing toward the faces our culture most wants to turn away from? What if we made the othered, not the subject of fear or object of pity, but the living embodiment of God’s will, like Jesus did? What if our sermons invited congregations to see these people as precious neighbors, indeed, as glimpses of eternal life? What if our ministries sought to know and serve those who we are tempted to other? How would that change our rhetoric, our hearts, and our society?

This is Jesus’ healing invitation. Let us go and do likewise.