Love Your Neighbor As Yourself
JD Vance (left) and Pope Francis (right). Photo as found on Catholic News Service website. Credit: Kevin Lamarque - Pool/Getty Images; Daniel Ibañez/CNA
Friends – We are in challenging times and within all the goings-on, perhaps you too may be struggling to make sense of all that is being done to you or your neighbors. And particularly disturbing has been the ways in which faith in Christ has been co-opted in order to advance a dangerously false gospel.
Over the last couple of weeks, you may have heard or seen a clip where Vice President JD Vance discusses a Christian concept called “ordo amoris” which translates to “order of love” or “order of charity”. In other words, it is the order in which we show love to others, a term first coined by St. Augustine in his work ”City of God”.
In a Fox News interview, Vance said:
“As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. That doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders, but there’s this old-school—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way—that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
As you can imagine, Christians of all backgrounds have been adding their theological perspectives to the conversation. Pope Francis weighed in on the concept of the order of love:
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” The Pope wrote. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
In an earlier writing than City of God and the coining of ordo amoris, St. Augustine wrote the following in On Christian Doctrine that gives more insight into how we show love to others:
Further, all men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.
A photo of an individual holding the hands of and older indivdual who is sitting in a chair.
What Augustine is saying in this text is not truly that your family must always take priority. It is much more likely that Augustine is saying that there is a limitation on who you can help well because you can not help everyone well or in the same way due to limitations within your capacity; that naturally, you will be best positioned to help the ones within your personal care and sphere of influence. Augustine charges us to love all and to do good, paying special attention to those who cross our path whether by blood, or by happenstance of time and place. This could be your brother or this could be the homeless person you walk past. And in the case of one with power and influence, it may very well be everyone you have the power to influence through your actions and policies.
And as the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) would suggest, it is about helping those who are in proximity to you - not who is based in relation to you. The Good Samaritan helps the man on the road when others did not. If we were following the (dis)ordered love that Vance suggests, then the Samaritan should have also passed on and not helped the man on the side of the road. What I find solace in at this moment is that it is not JD Vance or even Augustine that I am taking a cue from - it is the words and examples of Jesus that I am following. It is that everyone is my neighbour and it is not just who I choose to see first or put first.
So, why are we, an organization that promotes radical belonging for LGBTQ+ Christians and allies, talking about this, especially considering this was a statement that was made in the midst of discussing immigration policies?
We recognize that our lives are intersectional. We recognize that there are people in the QCF community and the wider LGBTQ+ community who are affected by these very policies that are being justified by harmful theologies. Additionally, modeling how we love others sets a precedent for how our neighbour is treated.
Here at Q Christian Fellowship, we talk about love quite a bit. As LGBTQ+ Christians, we are often judged based on who we love, how we love, what our various theologies say about love, and how we respond to others who do not love us all the time.
Love is not about picking and choosing, nor is it about prioritizing within concentric circles. Jesus speaks very plainly and clearly when he says, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-39) Who is my neighbor? Jesus answers this for us in Luke 10 when he shares in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, that our neighbor is anyone around us regardless of their nationality, racial or ethnic background, or socio-economic status. Remember in this story, the one who had mercy on the abused man is the one who is determined as the one who was truly neighborly. How do we love our neighbor as we love ourselves? Well Jesus answers that for us too in Matthew 25, “‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these siblings of mine, you did it to me.’”
Jesus tells us to do that with all of our heart and not to divide it between concentric circles - and maybe in the end that is where our focus shall be. As Jesus tells the expert in the law in Luke 10: “Go and do likewise.”
