Strange People in Strange Lands

It's almost universally accepted that we need to worry about ourselves before we worry about the rest of the world. There are movements to buy American, centered around supporting American industry and saving American jobs. We even get upset when some of our Mexican neighbors risk their lives to come to this country and work for almost nothing. Why?

At first, this seems cut and dried. We simply want to support our friends and neighbors and ensure they have the money they need to survive. Of course, it branches out from there. We also feel the duty to support fellow citizens that we've never met -- to prefer their well-being over the well-being of someone from another country. This is essentially what we're doing whenever we lament losing jobs to illegal immigrants in our country or legal residents of other countries.

We're making a judgment of human life and calling it patriotism. Under our "patriotic" ways, it's important to favor Americans jobs because we are are simply more important than Chinese, Mexicans, Indians, etc. Perhaps we don't say that outright, but that's certainly the underlying message. If you look at the issue objectively, it's clear that Chinese workers need jobs as badly as Americans, and Mexican men and woman need to provide food for their families as American parents do. Even so, in this Christian nation, we'd happily swipe food from a stranger from a foreign land to give to a stranger from our own. Let them starve, as long as we can feast.

Why do American's refuse to believe in the notion of a world community? That human beings in other countries are as important as human beings in our own? That, well, we should not begrudge others for just trying to get by?