In the wake of the Paris terror attacks in November 2015, Facebook created an option to drape profile pictures with French flags. Hundreds of thousands of Facebook users utilized the filters in solidarity with the French. Countries around the world lit up their monuments in the French tri-color to show their unity. The Facebook phenomenon repeated itself after the bombings in Brussels the following spring. After the recent attacks in London, #PrayForLondon quickly trended on Twitter. Somebody even created a #PrayforLondon Twitter account.

On Monday, a bomb tore through a St. Petersburg, Russia, subway. The terror attack killed at least 14 people and wounded close to 50.

Social media didn’t notice.

No Russian flag filter.

No trending hashtag.

No collective grief.

The reaction to the Russian terror attack demonstrates the dehumanizing effect of politics. In the political pecking order, Russians don’t quite merit flag filters or hashtags.

People who have the misfortune of living on the wrong side of lines drawn in the dirt tend to disappear. If the suicide bomber had blown himself up in Berlin, or God forbid, Wichita, we’d see an outpouring of collective grief. But this one happened in Russia. So most Americans just shuffle by, barely acknowledging the carnage – except maybe to cast derision on Muslims. By-and-large, it doesn’t really register as a tragedy. After all “those people” hacked our election.

Politics has a nasty way of turning entire groups of people into “others.” Russians. Iraqis. Iranians. North Koreans. Chinese, blacks, gays, Muslims, white men. People’s lives matter more or less based on geopolitical considerations.

But they don’t matter more or less to God. In Jesus’ eyes, there are no “others.”

Jesus demonstrated how his followers should respond to “the others” when a woman approached him at a well in Samaria.  She was the quintessential “other.” She was a woman. She was a Samaritan. She was an adulteress. Wrong sex. Wrong ethnicity. Wrong behaviors.

But Jesus didn’t turn away. To the woman’s shock, he spoke to her. He asked her for a drink.

“The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’ (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)”

Jews didn’t associate with Samaritans. Men didn’t speak to women in public. Saints didn’t associate with sinners.

But Jesus did.

In his mind, she was not an “other.” She was a fellow human being. She was a person who deserved dignity.

Jesus saw past all of the political classifications.

We need to learn to do the same.