But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”
Luke 10: 29
It turns out that this dialectical question put to our Lord provoked one of the most profound responses in all human social ethics. It led to our Lord's parable of the Good Samaritan. It marked out some of the central social characteristics of the City of God. In this parable we have the ethic that ultimately breaks the unbelieving nations apart, from the inside out.
We are familiar with the interchange which led to the parable. A lawyer or scribe had asked Jesus what he needed to do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus responded by asking him what the Law said. The lawyer knew the scriptures, and he answered very perceptively. The Law, he said, commanded that “you shall 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 your neighbour as yourself.” He was quoting, of course, from Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
Jesus affirmed his answer as correct. But, said the lawyer, who is my neighbour?
In reply, our Lord gives the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The simple story is so well known, it does not need repeating here. Yet, there is a profound subtlety to the parable that we often overlook. The lawyer was asking for a definition of who fell into the category of “neighbour”. The implication is that there are a whole lot of people who don't need to be loved as oneself because they don't qualify as being one's neighbour. Gentiles and Samaritans, for instance. Jesus' parable teaches us that the lawyer's question is a legitimate one, but the answer was not as he assumed it might be.
Jesus' parable did not directly answer the lawyer's question. It did not identify who the neighbour was. It, rather, identified who it was who acted in a neighbourly fashion—who loved in the way the Law required—and, of course, it was the Samaritan.
But the parable does identify the neighbour indirectly. The neighbour whom we are to love as we love ourselves is the person God puts in front of us in our ordinary course of life, and who is in need.
This is the heart of Jerusalem's social ethic. It is at the heart of the Law of God. We can summarise as follows: Christian social ethics are personal, occasional, near, and clear. In contrast, Christian social ethics are therefore not abstract, impersonal, programmatic, and removed.
Now, whenever we draw such a contrast as this, we run the risk of proposing a false dichotomy. Why cannot Christian social ethics be both? Why cannot love for one's neighbour (which is a complete summary of Commandments Five through Ten) be both personal and impersonal, occasional and programmatic, etc? The answer is simple. It is because programmes and abstractions, and impersonal entities cannot love. Love can only travel between human beings, heart to heart, soul to soul, person to person.
Now, we do not mean to imply that neighbourly charity cannot be supported by certain programmes or institutions—but they must always be structured in a neighbourly and personal fashion. There would be nothing inappropriate, for example, in the Samaritan of the parable gathering together with a few like-minded colleagues and setting up a rescue station along the Jerusalem to Jericho road, to patrol the road and rescue those set upon by thieves. But in the end, someone has to represent the Samaritan and his friends and administer love and compassion to the afflicted, in the name of the Samaritan and as his personal representative.
This means that the Samaritan, through his personal representative, would continue to encounter people in need as he goes about his daily tasks. Only then does it remain a love of neighbour; only then is the programme neighbourly, and personal.
But, if the Samaritan were to go to the government and call for people to be taxed to support a communal welfare project, the act would no longer be neighbourly, heart to heart, person to person. Or if the Samaritan were to set up a corporate charity run by an impersonal committee, so that its representatives could not minister personally to others on behalf of identifiable persons as their representatives, it would no longer be loving one's neighbour as oneself. It would generate more problems than it would solve. It would not comply with the requirements of the Law of God.
When you consider the matter, most social welfare and social ethical actions found in Athens are of the removed, programmatic, impersonal, legalistic, and abstract kind. There is a simple reason for this. It is because people in Athens cannot love their neighbour as themselves. They cannot obey God's Law; they are substantially dead to it. All they have left is the impersonal and the programmatic, the form without the substance. This explains why social ethics and welfare within the City of Unbelief are consistently destructive and create far greater problems than they purport to solve.
It is true that not a few welfare programmes in Jerusalem have copied leaves from Athenian books and are set up as programmatic, impersonal, removed institutions. These need changing to a more neighbourly, biblical frame. As God's people set themselves to love their neighbours as themselves—doing what they can to help those in need whom they encounter as they go about their personal business—they will eventually break the bands of Unbelief apart. No Unbelieving culture can long withstand such a spiritual assault on its very foundations.
But, of course, in order to love neighbour powerfully, God's people must first, and at the same time, love God with all their heart, soul, strength and mind—for only then will they be able to love their neighbour as themselves.
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