Hello, my friends,

I hope you're doing well!

Jesus' call to love our neighbor as ourselves is central to the Christian faith. Naturally, it becomes central to how we interpret and approach social and political issues, all of which involve our "neighbors." This couldn't be more clear in our political climate today, when saying that we should love our neighbors can cause controversy, depending on who we might be referring to. So today, I wanted to invite us to ponder what causes Jesus' command to love our neighbor as ourselves to become controversial in Christian circles today and how we might respond.

But first, here are some resources you might find helpful.

​-On Spirituality, Certitude, and Infinite Love by Brene Brown with Richard Rohr. This two part conversation is just rich with wisdom and insight and is deeply relevant for today. If you haven't yet heard this conversation, I encourage you to check it out.

​-The politics of threat detection (with David French) by Good Faith Podcast. I shared this last week, but wanted to recommend it yet again this week because of how informative I found it to be. David French sit down for a deep dive into ways people are detecting threats in today's polarized landscape. They explore how both conservatives and progressives (including Christians of both stripes) often distort potential dangers, creating a misleading perception of reality and double standards. They also provide practical strategies for repairing our dysfunctional threat detectors. Highly recommend.

​-indigo: the color of grief by Jonathan J. Foster. This book was written by a theologian friend of mine after the painful loss of his daughter. It is an honest and beautiful companion for anyone who may be processing their own grief. I encourage you to look into it.

​-Christian Faith & Democracy Statement. People will ask me from time to time if there is anything they can "do" to take a little action towards the things they believe in. This statement is a little way of doing that. You can read it over and if you feel led, you can add your name to the many who have already signed this statement in the hopes of upholding our democracy as Christians. You can see all the folks who wrote up this statement at the bottom and explore the site to learn more.

​-EDF Action I recently became aware of this agency that is taking political action to help confront climate change, which is an issue I am very passionate about. They are now working to get signatures from folks who feel strongly that our planet needs to be taken care of better, especially by big business and federal regulations. As you may know, the EPA is one of the targeted organizations that would be gutted if Project 2025 was made reality, which calls climate change a "myth." You can read more about EDF by the link above and if you'd like to sign their petition, you can do so here.

Okay, onto today's content.

When 'Love Your Neighbor' Becomes Controversial.

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

Have you noticed how controversial this phrase seems to be lately?

Whenever I emphasize the need to love our neighbor as ourselves online, there are several typical response I will get from fellow Christians.

Some will say, “Love for God comes first! If you don’t love God first then you don’t know how to love your neighbor.”

Others will say, “You can’t love someone without the truth. If you’re not willing to call out their sin, it isn’t loving your neighbor.”

These responses seem to communicate some central concerns we often hear from many Christians right now. Concerns that God or the truth aren’t being prioritized in our culture or by the church right now. A concern that only emphasizing “love” in our time will simply lead to abandoning them altogether.

I witnessed these concerns get amplified specifically over the phrase “love your neighbor” during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many prominent religious figures like Rick Warren, Russell Moore, Franklin Grahm, and even the Pope issued statements revolving around the theme that masking up and choosing to get vaccinated was a tangible way of loving your neighbor well and saving lives.

​Many Christians reacted very strongly against this message. They saw this as weaponizing “love your neighbor” in a way of infringed on their personal freedoms. The antipathy towards this phrase being used towards social issues has grown since then.

Antipathy has also grown towards this phrase because of the influence of nationalism within Christian circles in the United States. Nationalism is rooted in the radical commitment to ones own nation first and foremost, even to the detriment of other nations. When nationalism holds sway for us Christians, this naturally limits the category of “neighbor” to those in our own religion or nation first and foremost.

No matter the political or social issue, from immigration to abortion to racial justice, if you are paying close attention to how discussions are carried out, you will hear how the category of “neighbor” is defined, who fits that category, and who doesn’t.

No matter where we are on the political spectrum, we Christians are always wrestling with what it looks like to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Equal Rank

One of the issues that leads to these kinds of controversy is how we interpret Jesus' words about the greatest commandment itself.

Let’s take a look at what Jesus says in Matthew 22:37-40:

"Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

When reading this at face value, it is easy to see how we can arrive at thinking that Jesus is creating a hierarchy of power over how we are to love. It’s love for God first, then second is love for our neighbors. In that order.

This hierarchy of power fits the responses we will often hear and justifies defining and even limiting the category of “neighbor” based on who fits within that hierarchy of power and who doesn't.

Ironically, this is hierarchy of power is actually something Jesus was speaking against with how he framed the command to love our neighbors.

In Matthew 22:39, where Jesus says “and the second is like it” the Greek word we translate to “like” is homoios, which literally means “the same as, of equal rank.”

So Jesus is saying that loving our neighbor as ourselves is “the same as, of equal rank” to loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. They are inseparably linked. You cannot have one without the other.

This is why Jesus says in Matthew 22:40: “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

This is starkly put in 1 John 4:20-21 (MSG): “If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both.”

When love for God is seen as the first command, separate from and suspended over the second, it naturally results in being used as a tool of power and control over others, ensuring they conform to this command before we will follow the second and "love them as ourselves."

Jesus doesn’t stand for that kind of legalism, hence his response. Jesus insists these two commands are inseparable from each other, of equal importance.

This command to love our neighbor as ourselves only becomes controversial when we have already decided that there are people who we will never consider as our “neighbors.”

This command to love our neighbors as ourselves only becomes controversial when we define it through a hierarchy of power as if we must ensure how our neighbor lives, believes, or acts is in line with our own values before we “love” them fully, otherwise we might be seen condoning something we don’t approve of.

This command to love our neighbors as ourselves only becomes controversial when we prioritize our own interests over our compassion toward others.

Notice who is at the center of that kind of definition of love? Ourselves. It isn’t God or our neighbor. It’s our desire for power and control, maintaining our religious purity, which isn’t love.

The Good Samaritan

This is the central theme in Jesus’ parable we often call “The Good Samaritan.”​

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But the expert in the law wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

There it is. There is that central question. The question that is asked when we want to limit who the category of “neighbor” applies to.

Then Jesus launches right into the parable of the Good Samaritan.

After telling the parable, Jesus flips the lawyer’s question on its head.

Instead of answering the question, “who is my neighbor,” Jesus asks him, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

You see, the expert of the law was looking for a loophole to obey “loving his neighbor” on his terms. It’s really easy to love your neighbor when you have a nice, neat group of people who you consider as your neighbors. People who look like you, believe like you, and live like you. Boom. Command obeyed.

Jesus dismantles this limited view of “neighbor” by how he told his parable.

Choosing a Samaritan as the hero of his parable was an intentional choice by Jesus. It was meant to make everyone who was listening uncomfortable because Samaritans didn’t fit the category of “neighbor” for many people.

You see, Samaritans were religious and ethnic relatives of Israelites.

They believed in the same God, but they worshiped that God very differently from Israel.

While Israelites worshiped God in the temple in Jerusalem, Samaritans worshiped God on Mount Gerizim.

This and many other reasons made Israelites see Samaritans as “unclean” and “unholy.”

Samaritans felt similarly about Israelites.

A friend of mine used to always make a joke about different Christian denominations. He would say, “we should never get upset about people worshiping God differently. They can worship God their way and we can worship God… God’s way!” It gets me every time!

That is a pretty accurate way of describing how Samaritans and Israelites felt about each other.

Samaritans weren’t Gentiles, but they weren’t really seen as part of the “chosen people” by Israel either.

Which is worse for good religious people like us Christians, right?

We, Christians, don’t get nearly as upset at non-Christians as we do towards other Christians who claim to believe the same things we do, yet interpret everything the exact opposite way from us. We seem to see that kind of anger everywhere these days.

Who Is Our Samaritan?

So, I can’t help but think who Jesus would use as his central character if he told us Christians this parable today.

Who would be our “Samaritan?”

I know that for my fundamentalist Christian church growing up, Jesus would have used an LGBT Christian or a Muslim American as the one who showed God’s compassion and helped the injured man.

My church growing up would have refused to see these figures as a “neighbor” let alone being capable of compassion or mercy.

They refused to see them through the love of Christ.

Jesus wouldn’t leave Christians on the progressive side comfortable either. Who might Jesus use as his central character for progressive Christians? Who would they have a hard time seeing as a good neighbor and a source of God’s compassion?

Maybe Jesus would use someone who looks like me. A white guy from Idaho with a beard. Maybe he would be wearing a yellow "don't tread on me” t-shirt and maybe even wearing a red hat.

The reality is that Jesus is always challenging our narrow definitions of who our neighbor is. Challenging our beliefs that have simply written certain people off as “unclean” and “unholy.”

Then, just when we think Jesus has challenged us enough, he goes on and makes the parable worse!

Not only did he use a Samaritan as the hero, but he used a priest and Levite as the bad guys.

These patriotic and religious heroes were the ones who refused to stop and offer help.

Jesus shows a Samaritan as having more more civic duty, righteousness, and honor than the most honored figures in Israel.

So, picture the person you most admire, the person you most respect, caught on security cameras walking on the other side of the road, refusing to show compassion to a man left for dead.

Then imagine your shock while the one you thought wasn’t your neighbor at all, who in your mind was incapable of showing God’s love, stops to help the injured man and displays deep compassion for him.

This is a deeply challenging and radical parable.

Love Changes People

Just as a side note, if you feel hopeless that people can’t or won’t ever change from the way they are right now, I want you to look at my story as a source of hope.

I grew up a fundamentalist Christian, then became an Evangelical. I was homeschooled k-12 in rural Nampa Idaho. My worldview was so small and filled with so much fear towards what I didn’t understand.

I saw my Christianity as giving me the right to correct and control others. Not only to save their eternal soul but to protect and preserve my faith and my nation.

I thought Christians, like the one I am today, were total heretics. Not in a million years would I have ever thought that following Jesus while reading the Bible seriously, learning about church history, and serving the church for almost two decades, would have made me who I am today. This bearded Idaho white boy has changed so much!

But it wasn’t because of judgment or hate that I was changed. I was changed by the love, compassion, and mercy of others. I was changed by my parents, who continued to encourage me to think deeply and ask questions about things. I was changed by professors who saw my hostility toward different beliefs and didn’t write me off but committed to journeying with me. I was changed by friends who loved me no matter what. I was changed by people being good neighbors to me.

My category of “neighbor” was expanded because of love. Love and compassion from good neighbors.

You see, the Samaritan in Jesus' parable didn’t stop to see if the man left for dead aligned with his personal religious beliefs. The Samaritan didn’t stop and make sure the man left for dead was living a lifestyle he approved of or had the same political beliefs before loving him. The Samaritan didn’t try to convert the man left for dead to his own religion or political point of view. The Samaritan didn't stop to ask, "What if this man is a "sinner" and people find out I paid for his healthcare and lodging?" No, the Samaritan showed radical compassion.

Instead of asking, “Is this man left for dead my neighbor?,” the Samaritan asked instead, “How can I be a good neighbor to this man?”

I believe this is the fundamental question followers of Jesus are to ask when we hear “love your neighbor as yourself.”

It isn’t, “Who is my neighbor?” or “How can I make sure my neighbor aligns with my personal beliefs before I choose to love them?”

No, the question we are called to ask is, “How can I be a good neighbor to others?” Then let compassion lead our way rather than power and control.

This is to remember the new command Jesus gave his followers at the Last Supper: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

May we “go and do likewise.”

May love be our reputation.