Neighbor is not Some Mysterious Legal Term of Art
These people are your neighbors.
The JG weighing in (in typical JG fashion) on the Ordo Amoris controversy long after everyone else was finished with it has really sparked a lot of good discussion (in my head).
So given our firm policy of always giving the people more of what they want, lets talk about the Good Samaritan.
A friend kept saying that in the Good Samaritan parable Christ was saying “your countryman is your neighbor, duh.” That caught my attention because the parable nowhere mentions the word countryman, nor would the Jews have thought of the Samaritans as their countrymen. But the vast majority of the people to whom Christ’s parable would have come then and now would obviously see the Jews and the Samaritans as countrymen. They lived intertwined, had a shared history, and had a lot of common culture and language. Kinda obviously two different flavors of the same thing. Countrymen.
One way of looking at the parable of the Good Samaritan is Christ says Love God Above All, but also you have to love the people in your groups like you love yourself. And a lawyer asks, well, who counts as being in a group with me? And Christ tells him, don’t be a lawyer about this. This is a commonsense. You are looking for some technical definition you can use to excuse yourself of responsibility but I’m not playing that game with you. You have to use good faith and judgment. ‘But who is my neighbor?’ Gimme a break, really? Your neighbor is your neighbor.
Some modern interpretations of the Good Samaritan parable could have come straight from that lawyer’s mouth. In the guise of laudably trying to extend the circle of neighborliness they seem to be trying to exclude actual neighbors and actual countrymen from the circle of whom we are supposed to care for.
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Jacob G.
February 12, 2025
The odd thing about that parable is Jesus’ question at the end. Of the three men, who did the robbed man see as his neighbor?
From this you could say well my neighbor is the one who was actually there for me, not those who ignore me, or who are despitefully using me.
But then Jesus tells the lawyer to, ‘Go and do likewise’. So I think the point is we want to expand our neighbor circle as much as possible and not minimize it, similar to how a true son of Abraham would want to expand his family as much as possible and not keep it to a minimum.
So perhaps the point of the question of who the victim saw as his neighbor tells us what the natural limit of the desire to expand our circles are: these relationships have to become two-way street.
That said, being merciful and free with other peoples things doesn’t strike me as virtuous.
Zen
February 12, 2025
I think the final point G made needs to be emphasized. It isn’t that any one is against charity. It is that some are in favor of charity to people they have not met, over their next door neighbor, and some (such as myself) want charity to begin with the neighbor next door.
Too often charity is a cloak for despising the poor in your own country.
And yes to Jacob’s point, that being free with other people’s money is not charity.