Love Your Neighbor

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

 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.” (Matthew 22:36-40)

I keep coming back to this verse, and I’m afraid those reading these essays will wonder if I’ll ever shut up about them. But, as Jesus said, they are the greatest commandments. People are asking for the solution to the problems of what they call racial injustice (I call it injustice.) People are asking how we can build a better world. Unfortunately, most of the time, I think they mean, “How can we build a better world without my having to do anything uncomfortable?” And the answer to that is, we can not. If the world is to be a better place, the only way it is going to do so is if we leave our comfort zones and obey what Jesus said above. 

There is no alternative. It will not do for the government to love your neighbor as you want the government to love you. It all depends on you, which means it all depends on God because to put it bluntly, you can’t do it, and the government is even less capable. 

This morning, I find a question peeking out at me from these verses. I’ve said before that whatever we consider as our foundational reality, whether it is that “The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be,” or that God so loved the world… that foundational reality acts as our god. If one cannot love that foundational reality, or cannot perceive a reason to love it – perhaps because “There’s no need, it just is what it is,” then should we not ask whether that does not reveal to us that it is not the god on which we should base our lives? 

But, returning to the main theme of the day. If we would build a better world, it is not enough to hatefully scream, “Stop hating!” If we would build a world in which people are not judged based on the color of their skin, we must not judge based on the color of their skin. We can’t condemn all Black people as being this or that – and we cannot condemn all White people as “privileged,” ignorant, or hateful. If we would build a better world, I believe we must stop saying that it’s wrong to kill Black people and insist that it is wrong to kill people. That is equality. That is justice. Mr. Floyd should not have not been killed because he was Black. He should not have been killed because he was a man a member of the Human race. He should have not been killed because he was Mr. Chauvin’s neighbor (no matter where they each lived) and he should have been loved as Mr. Chauvin loves himself. 

If we are going to rise above the petty hatred that has marred our history, then we have to put away the petty hatred that has marred our history. It must happen individually, because a systemic, imposed systemic solution will not prevent or eliminate the hatred. It can only respond after the fact, and it can only be used to bludgeon others into submission, not to win their hearts. Our hearts need to be won. And then our hearts need to win the hearts of others. That is what Scripture teaches.

As an ironic end note, Grammarly doesn't have any problem with my capitalizing "Black" in any of the statements above, but it marks "White" as wrong. It doesn't have a problem with "racial injustice" but it wants to make "injustice" into "an injustice."