Defeater Ethics: Loving God & Neighbor
How "love thy neighbor" intersects with "love the Lord your God."
We have reached a turning point in our series on defeater ethics. Thus far, I have answered ethical objections against God himself. How can a good God judge humanity, allow evil and suffering, restrict sexual freedom, and so forth? Moving forward, the defeater ethics I will address are not about God but our poor representation of God. The failures of Christians that others hold against Christ himself.
But I received a question I cannot resist addressing. In response to my three-part discussion on sexual ethics, I was asked to explain the nature of Christian love within a moral order where LGBTQ+ affirmation has become the standard of love. I believe this person is not alone in that dilemma. Most Christians genuinely don't want to know how to love their gay family, friends, and neighbors while not abandoning deeply held religious convictions in the process.
Answering that complicated question is not a departure from our discussion on defeater ethics because, candidly, the greatest barrier to the Christian faith has always been the failure of Christians to love. Jesus said the world will know us by our love. Paul said that if we get everything right and have not love, then we are always wrong. So, we have sturdy biblical grounds to argue our failure to love is the greatest ethical barrier to the Christian faith.
We must get love right. But again, what does that look like? Let's turn to Jesus for the answer.
Mark Chapter 12, "And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the most important of all?" Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
When asked for the greatest commandment, Jesus gives two. He believes love of God and neighbor belong inextricably together. And it's their union that speaks to the essence of Christian love.
First, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." That answer would not be surprising to his Jewish context, as it was arguably their most cherished command. Referred to as the Shema, this passage from Deuteronomy 6 was recited morning and evening and, to this day, remains the central creed of the Jewish religion.
But then Jesus does something unexpected. He adds to the Shema, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." This, of course, is a version of what is commonly referred to as the 'the golden rule.' It appears almost inconspicuously in Leviticus 19:18 and certainly doesn't hold the prominence of the Shema, but Jesus still chooses to include it for a reason.
Every religion and moral consensus includes the golden rule in some form. Ancient philosophers in Jesus' time argued for it, and down through the ages, it has endured as the most agreed-upon standard of ethical love. In fact, in 1993, the Parliament of World Religions declared the golden rule the one global ethic transcending every religion. The one thing all religions agree upon is that we should treat others how we want to be treated.
This is what Jesus has effectively done. He has taken the most agreed upon Jewish love commandment and the most agreed upon societal love commandment and combined them together as one. There would be nothing particularly extraordinary about him choosing the Shema as the greatest commandment. His Jewish tradition would agree. Nor would there be anything particularly extraordinary about him choosing the golden rule as the greatest commandment. All cultures and religions would agree. But what makes the Christian vision of love so unique is both are demanded.
In binding them together, each becomes what the other desperately needs. The command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is begging for application. How do we do this? Similarly, the command to love my neighbor as myself is crying out for foundation. Why should we do this? But together, they satisfy the other.
We now have a concrete application to the seemingly ethereal command to love the Lord our God. How do we love God? Is it words we say, a feeling we have, practically how do we love the Lord our God? Jesus offers our neighbor as the answer. Love for God is sensibly expressed by our love for neighbor.
And now we also have a foundation for love of our neighbor. Every religion and every culture tells you to treat others how you want to be treated. But you are right to ask why. Secular ethics argues it's good for humanity. But why should I care about humanity more than myself? In fact, the very philosophy that undergirds secularity says I should be concerned about my survival over my neighbor. The golden rule is the antithesis of the Darwinian struggle, which argues selfish genetics has led to human flourishing. The secular worldview gives me no good reason to follow the golden rule. Love for neighbor is begging for a foundation, which Jesus has provided. Why love your neighbor as yourself? Because we love God with our whole self, and this God we love commands that we love him by loving his image bearers.
Therefore, in uniting these two together, we finally have a satisfying definition of love: Loving God ultimately, expressed via love for neighbor sacrificially. Consider now this vision of love in light of the question posed to me. In a moral order where LGBTQ+ affirmation holds supremacy, what does love mean?
A few years ago, my wife and I were in downtown Lexington on a date, and unbeknownst to us, it was the same day as Lexington's pride festival. I certainly noticed a Christian presence at the festival, but did it pass the test of Jesus' greatest commandment? Some were there in protest, condemning attendees with news of God's hatred and condemnation. Others were there in affirmation, assuaging attendees with news of God's agreement and support. And though both were utterly convinced they were loving the gay community, both were compromising one side of the great commandment, and in so doing, love itself was compromised.
The protesters were not treating the crowd as neighbors to be loved but as enemies to be defeated. This we cannot do if we are going to obey Jesus. We must offer the LGBTQ+ community the same warmth, kindness, hospitality, and care demonstrated by the good Samaritan. If you love God, you must befriend God's image bearers and approach that image with the supreme dignity it deserves. This is the very application of our love of God.
And yet, we must not forget the foundation of love for these neighbors, which is our love for almighty God. This is where those who view love as blanket affirmation must take heed. If we love God, we cannot cast off God's design, disregard his law, embrace his ethics only when it is socially acceptable, and cowardly change his ethics when it is socially controversial. In our hospitality toward neighbors, we cannot compromise God's moral standards, though it is admittedly tempting to do so. At the end of the day, we love God more than the inner circle of social acceptability, and that love will not allow us to affirm what God condemns, whether that be our sins or the sins of others.
Chances are, in a culture so divided over human sexuality, one of the two points I just made had you amening and one had you squirming. On a most practical level, if you want to know what love looks like for you, it's devoting yourself to the one that had you squirming.
If befriending your gay neighbors with warmth, kindness, and hospitality makes you uncomfortable, then that is what love is demanding you to do. If holding fast to our historic ethic and resisting the social temptation to compromise makes you uncomfortable, then that is what love is demanding you to do.
You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. This is the foundation of love. You are to love your neighbor as yourself. This is the application of love. With steadfast resolve, hold both together as one, for this is the essence of love.