The clear, explicit, and repeated teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is that you should love your neighbor as yourself (see Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27-28).
Despite this, the 21st century has seen the emergence of another way of asking the same question that a lawyer asked Jesus when pressing him on this second of the two great commandments: “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). In this era of identity politics, many people identify themselves as victims of oppression. This can take the form of racial/ethnic minority groups feeling oppressed by a majority group, or rural populations resenting urban elites, or disgruntled religious groups facing a secularized establishment, or any of a myriad of other scenarios. In each case, the identity narrative provides both a sense of belonging and a way to distinguish between the good guys (us) and the villains (them).
Not only does this identity narrative make any sort of national social cohesion extremely difficult, but it also incurs individual, spiritual costs by making it easy to dehumanize “them.” In an identity-driven, politically polarized atmosphere, anyone can be tempted to equate identity and political agreement with love (“if you don’t agree with me, you must not love me or be part of my group”). And this temptation makes it easier to define “neighbor” as someone who agrees with you. Arcana Coelestia 6756 suggests that this reflects our focusing on affinities based on “natural and civil” considerations rather than spiritual affinities.
The 21st century is not the first time humans have been tempted to reduce the category of “neighbor” to something easier to love. The lawyer’s question to Jesus in Luke 10 can be seen as a plea for exceptions. But it led to the parable of the Good Samaritan – a direct challenge to the prevailing Jewish attitudes of the time toward a despised “other” group. Challenging people’s definition of “neighbor” is a consistent theme in the gospels.
For example, Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “And whoever makes you go one mile, go with him two” (Matthew 5:41). This seems like a slightly strange scenario to us, but it would have been a profoundly disturbing sentence for his audience to hear. The idea of going an extra mile was not a platitude about the value of hard work; it was designed to strike a raw nerve in the people of an occupied, oppressed Galilee. Soldiers of the Roman army, who regularly carried about 70 pounds of equipment, had the legal right to force any subject of an occupied territory to carry their gear for up to one mile (and no further).
The Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew then immediately continues:
You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you, for if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Don't even the tax collectors do the same? If you only greet your friends, what more do you do than others? Don't even the Gentiles do the same? (Matthew 5:43-47)
Enemies, persecutors, mistreators, tax collectors, gentiles "“ Jesus is clearly referring to the Romans and their allies, and asking people to change how they relate to their opponents. Perhaps as a result, Christians have — with many missteps — made progress in "neighborliness" over the past two millennia. In one famous case, Martin Luther King, Jr. showed how to put these teachings into practice when he asked his followers who wanted to join protests in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 to sign a pledge of commitment to nonviolence. The pledge listed ten precepts including "walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love," "observe with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy," and "refrain from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart."
If Jesus could ask an occupied, oppressed Jewish people to love their Roman neighbors and if MLK could follow that teaching by asking his segregated, disenfranchised followers to be courteous to their persecutors, how much more should we overlook the disagreements and divisions encouraged by the politics of our day?
In True Christian Religion 411, we read: “Loving the neighbor as oneself means not despising him compared with oneself, dealing justly with him, and not passing wicked judgment upon him. The law of charity promulgated and given by the Lord Himself is this: Whatever you wish people to do to you, do the same to them; for this is the Law and the Prophets, Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31-32.”
(Afterthought: It’s a good thing that the Lord approaches us this way. What if he dismissed us from his life if we had a different opinion or different approach to His? Just as He offers us forgiveness and mercy, perhaps we can do the same with our opponents.)
