Why Loving our Neighbors Cannot Contradict God’s Creational Design
The oft-repeated biblical command that we love our neighbors (Lev 19:18; Matt 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Rom 13:9; Gal 5:14; James 2:8) is a favorite political prooftext of progressive evangelicals. It is often taken for granted that loving our neighbors means supporting any and every cause with some vaguely altruistic intent, from open borders, to a large welfare state, to lenient criminal sentencing. There is much that can be said about the scripture-twisting and logic-chopping required to come to such conclusions, but in this article I will make a simple point: the command that we love our neighbors cannot be set against the demands of divine justice or God’s creational design. In particular, loving our neighbors cannot lead to a government pursuing policies that will destroy families and civil society, and lead to national disaster. For some reason, this is a very difficult idea for many evangelicals to grasp: one of God’s commands can never contradict another; it cannot be the case that one is called to love his neighbor while pursuing aims that will lead to evils elsewhere. This is not even to mention the fact that many Christian claims about what loving our neighbors requires do not even consider the actual damage done to the majority of those around us by misguided governmental policies.
In many places in Scripture, God’s people are called to love their neighbors. In the parable of the “good Samaritan” (Luke 10:25–37) Jesus made it clear that this did not apply merely to fellow believers. That fact may be the only one that many evangelicals get right, because they often include every social cause they support in the meaning of loving one’s neighbor. They can point to the often pitiful condition of illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border, or to extreme poverty in America’s cities, perhaps even to the mere desire of people from other nations to live in America, and claim that loving one’s neighbor means allowing such immigrants (legal or otherwise) into the country, or to the government spending vast sums of money to eliminate poverty. This becomes a potent rallying cry every time there is an election.
The biblical command to love one’s neighbor is a command to seek, within one’s own immediate experience, to do good to those one encounters in life. Loving one’s neighbors might mean helping them rebuild after a natural disaster, or other acts of basic human kindness, but the main point of Christ’s teaching on the good Samaritan was to combat a Jewish restriction of mercy and kindness to fellow Jews, to show them (and everyone else) that your neighbor is the person right in front of your face, Jew, Christian, or pagan.
Christians must love their neighbors. But Christians also must adhere to all biblical teaching and must live in harmony with God’s creational design. If a specific action undermines God’s creational design, it for that very reason cannot be an instance of loving one’s neighbor. Illegal immigration, and even mass legal immigration without the possibility of assimilation, undermines the social fabric of any nation. Welfare payments (apart from temporary emergency provisions) discourage industriousness and lead to a whole host societal disfunctions (a lack of children with married parents, etc.). Lenient criminal sentencing encourages crime and violence (as seen in recent decriminalizations of theft in many cities). None of these policies, then, can possibly be instances of loving one’s neighbor. In actual reality, such things are not even instances of Christians doing anything for their neighbors, but rather of them trying to get the government to spend massive amounts belonging to their actual neighbors to be spent on their preferred social causes.
Christian confusion about the meaning of neighbor love spills over into confusion about how we should view our nations. Faithfulness to God obviously trumps all else. Nations are earthly goods, just like families are. But they are not for that reason to be dismissed as nothing more than sources of evil or idolatrous temptation. The Christian must love God even more than he loves his family and must be willing to stand against his family if it would tempt him to do evil: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). The same reality would also apply to one’s nation. But loving one’s nation, and the people in it, is an earthly good, an aspect of God’s good creational design. Our primary responsibility as Christians, precisely because of God’s command that we love our neighbors, is that we love those around us. This is not a justification to hate people from other nations, or to seek their harm. It is simply loving our actual neighbors.
Christians have a vital spiritual link with all believers the world over. This is a link that transcends our national identity. This fact, however, often leads Christians astray. The spiritual link we have is then taken to imply that we should not in any way prioritize our own national well-being. This confusion stems from the basic error I mentioned at the beginning of this article: that biblical commands to love (in this case, to love fellow believers, an even greater imperative than simple neighbor love) somehow transcend God’s creational design with respect to one’s nation. Love of fellow believers cannot necessitate anything that will undermine God’s good order for society. The argument here is usually directed toward immigration: Christian love means prioritizing fellow Christians; ergo: we should allow all Christians into our country; ergo: we should not allow concerns about social stability and welfare to get in the way of such acts of love.
Or consider the biblical command to love one’s enemy. What does this command require of us? Primarily, it requires that we leave vengeance in the hands of the Lord when we are attacked or sinned against by others. Jesus commanded: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt 5:44–45). The apostle Paul similarly said: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (Rom 12:14), going on to say that we must “never avenge [ourselves], but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Rom 12:19). The Bible assumes we will have enemies and tells us how to respond to them in a godly way. Primarily, the response must be one of refusing to seek personal revenge for wrongs done to oneself. This command, however, has often been taken to imply all sorts of social and political practices, lax law enforcement being one currently in vogue. Paul did not end his discussion of how to respond to enemies, however, in Romans 12. In Romans 13 he shows us how the evils done to us by our enemies are to be dealt with. The reason Christians are not to engage in personal revenge is not that the evils done to them are not real evils, or that God does not care about justice for those wrongs. Far from it. The “governing authorities,” that is, civil magistrates, have been “instituted by God” (Rom 13:1) to be a “terror” (Rom 13:3) to those who do evil, to “bear the sword” against them (Rom 13:4). In fact, the reason the Christian should not seek revenge, not “avenge” himself (Rom 12:19) against a personal enemy, is that the avenger (God) uses his “servant” (the civil magistrate) to “carry out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom 13:4). In other words, when Christians are seriously mistreated by their enemies they leave it up to God to avenge them through the earthly authorities he has appointed. Loving our enemies does not mean allowing them to get away with the evils done to us. It means dealing with those evils in the way God has appointed. In a fallen world justice is often elusive, though we know that God will show justice and vindicate his children on the last day, if the governing authorities fail to do what God requires of them in the present.
The main point of all of this is simple, and particularly relevant as we approach a presidential election: loving one’s enemies, just like loving one’s nation and one’s neighbors, never comes at the expense of God’s creational design for individuals, the family, and civil society. Love and justice are always in perfect harmony in God’s law. The political and societal aims of Christians must, therefore, reflect this concord. Anything less than this is not love at all.
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In the abstract, I agree with Dunson’s article. But there are some problems here. Those problems revolve around assumed definitions.
What is God’s creational design for the nations? Do we learn about His creational design through natural or special revelation? Is it one or the other or both? The same questions can be asked about civil society?
We should note about Romans 13 that the definition of evil is assumed to be understood by those in the Church at Rome. So do we define the evils that God wants the government to bear the sword against that which was listed in Romans 1? If so, then we all need to get or update our shields. Why? It is because of Romans 2. However, we should note that in the New Testament passages on Church discipline, a sinful society is assumed. One of the horrors of suspension and excommunication is that one would be cast out into society without the protection of the Church.
The problem with Dunson’s article is that it is too easy for both conservatives and non-conservatives alike to slip in their agenda when identifying God’s creational design regarding nations and civil societies. And by doing so, we can mistakenly bound or loose the requirements made on us by God’s command to love one’s neighbor. We might also counter by noting that the religious leaders of Jesus’s days on earth used traditions to free themselves from what God’s Word was requiring them to do. In addition, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus tells this listener, who wanted to justify himself by the law, to sell all that he had and give it to the poor. Perhaps that is pointing to the fact that none of us really love our neighbors as we should. And so perhaps we need to err, to a certain extent, on the part of sacrificial giving than reasonable restraint.
In addition, we should note that many who emigrate here do so to escape conditions that were largely caused by the policies of our own nation. What responsibilities do we have toward those immigrants? And, just perhaps, we need ask what it means to love our neighbors when it comes to our nation’s foreign policies.
Until Dunson gives an adequate amount of details on God’s design for nations and civil societies, there is not much else one can say about the above article.
I’ve always said that right wingers think a man loves his wife by beating the crap out of her. You’ve proven my point here.
Karen,
People who overstate their case lose credibility for themselves and their causes.
So tell me where I’m wrong? If it’s loving to inflict pain on people to make them behave, then husbands should be able to beat their wives for disobedience. You definitely think this but you’re all too cowardly to say so openly. Quit being cowards and endorse wife-beating.
Karen,
Do you really believe that all politically right-wing men believe in beating their wives? I go to conservative churches and so of all of the politically right-wing men I know, I could only suspect one of doing so.
However, it is clear today’s political right-wingers are more authoritarian than yesteryear’s ones.