So a certain elected official in the U.S. recently claimed that it is a “Christian concept” to first “love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community,” and then to continue dwindling downward, as if love were a singular sort of thing, available in a diminishing quantity.
This was a silly statement, made by a decidedly un-serious politician, but even sillier were the arguments back and forth that resulted.
Yes, it’s obvious that human beings have preferential feelings for certain other people with whom we share blood or some other bond. So, if one actually believes this to be a “Christian concept,” then one must think Christianity a very obvious sort of religion. And if, as a religion, it points us to act only in obvious ways that align with natural instincts, then what, pray tell, would be the point of following that religion?
Of course, this is not a Christian concept at all, because Christianity (as described in the New Testament, as opposed to the “Christendom” that developed and still exists) is not as stupidly obvious as all that.
Perhaps if this particular politician’s party were as enamored of the New Testament’s Beatitudes as they are of the Old Testament’s Ten Commandments, he might have paused to remember a certain someone (alleged to be of central importance to the politician’s claimed religion) saying, “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?”
It’s sad proof of the paganism of American Political Christianity that “conservative” pundits have rushed into the breach to “defend” the primacy of a preferential love (which all humans instinctively feel, and thus needs no defense) against the love to which Christ calls us all — the love of neighbor (which runs counter to all natural human instincts).
Neighbors, after all, are not people in particular, but people in general; your neighbor is not the person you live next door to, or the person in the next room, or the person on your television set offering views with which you agree, but literally anyone. And it is the idea that God is commanding us to love, not just the people we want to love, but anyone in general, which means anyone in particular — even your enemies! even smug, not-terribly-bright politicians! — well, this is the very radical difference between Christianity and paganism.
As Kierkegaard points out in Works of Love, preferential love is not in and of itself a bad thing, but it is not “the highest” of loves, because “erotic love and friendship … contain no moral task.”
It’s good fortune to fall in love, good fortune to find a friend, good fortune to have a family, which is why it’s nonsensical to suggest that it’s your task as a human being to find a lover, find a friend. What is the point of a Christianity that tasks you to do something that a) you want to do anyway, and b) is literally dependent on pure happenstance?
But our culture is utterly obsessed with preferential love; it’s why so much digital ink is wasted on “the epidemic of loneliness” … why online communities are forged in the fires of anger shared by people who feel they’ve been denied the “right” of sexual companionship … why American Political Christianity is stupefyingly fixated on an idea of “marriage” that is as un-Biblical as the indulgences that led to the Reformation.
Note that I’m not even choosing to discuss this particular topic because I want to weigh in on the specific policy matters on which this politician was pontificating. This is not a matter of one political side being right and the other wrong. After all, the policies in question, which are being upended and argued about, were not created in the first place out of any sense of morality or “neighbor love,” but to support the interests of the state, and its various administrations in and out of power.
What offends me is that this particular Vice President — an adult convert from one form of Christianity to another, no less — has such a weak grasp of his professed faith that he believes directing people to “Google” ordor amoris is sufficient to support his statement — which it wouldn’t be, even if were somehow representative of a settled theological argument. (Someone please tell First Things that “charity begins at home” is as Christian a statement as “God helps those who helps themselves,” which is to say, not at all. Oh, on second thought, don’t bother.)
Unfortunately, many of this particular politician’s opponents are not on any sturdier ground. Certainly there are organizations and ministries devoted to the service of migrants and the following of Christ’s commandments; those people can only be commended, and I like to think they will continue their missions no matter the government policy.
But then there are all the people clamoring online in (rightful) opposition to this politician’s statement, but not because they are filled with a zeal to follow what is, in real life, an incredibly awkward, difficult, if not downright impossible commandment, to love the neighbor; but because they clearly believe that supporting a particular party or policy position is really all that they have to do to fulfill the task Christ has given us all.
I wish it were that easy.