I did a stint in the emergency department at Cedar Sinai hospital in LA a few years back. During the training week we had a number of speakers address different topics such as how to deal with the press, nursing unions or various parties known for wanton litigiousness. One woman spoke about how to treat the patients using something she called the platinum rule, “Do unto others as they want you to do unto them,” obviously an amendment to the golden rule “Do unto others as you want the to do unto you.” The eye-rolling hubris of one-upping the Lord Jesus aside, it is a fair point: why not treat people according to their wishes and not what you think their wishes might be? Kind of cuts out the middleman, no?
I was thinking about this recently in regards to, yes, face masks. Though this may be construed as a jonny-come-lately maneuver, loving neighbors is here to stay, and there are always ample opportunities to practice. But I am going to apply it to face masks, since it is still the soup du jour and will probably be on the menu for several months to come.
There have been two common rebuttals to them Christian-folk refusing to don the face flag. The first is the Romans 13 argument which says we are to follow our leaders. I addressed this in a previous post, which was actually on lockdowns, but there are obvious transferable principles. The most common rebuttal, however, is the appeal to “love your neighbor.” Romans 14 is one of several passages cited as biblical buttressing of this viewpoint. If your brother is offended by your convictions, though you are free in your conscience, deferring to his convictions at the expense of your own is the loving thing to do.
This is true and integral to a body where there will be inevitable differences in convictions and levels of faitheyness. But this needs to be taken with wisdom, particularly in a culture like 21st century America, where we have become experts in victim husbandry, breeding only the finest thoroughbreds, each with their own bespoke and finicky tastes. We have been trained, not to meet people where they are and help them to a better place, but to accept whatever belief they have nestled down into, tuck them in, and give them a glass of warm milk.
We have done this by an ingenious crossbreeding of the fruits of the spirit with their counterpart fruit of the flesh, and discovered all kinds of interesting permutations. Niceness, in particular, is the cross breeding of gentleness and kindness with a wormy cowardliness. And let me tell you those trees fruit! We got bushels of niceness. What this means is that when someone tells us their preference we default to acquiescence as a rule, not wanting to be one of those haters who is unloving. How this has worked out practically, is if your neighbor wants you to wear a mask because they are afraid of covid, then it is morally unloving not to do so. Not only that, it is cold, heartless and selfish.
This rebuttal needs to be dealt with a bit more caution and a touch of pastoral care. Because it is true; we do need to love our neighbor up to and including wearing a mask. But does this request always apply? Is ‘love your neighbor’ a blank check by which our neighbor can have things just so?
Of course the answer is no. I can’t tell you how many times a psychiatric patient in the emergency department has demanded “just kill me.” And anyone who’s got kids knows love is often refusing a request; there is often a greater ‘yes’ on the other side of the lesser ‘no’. What it actually means to love someone in a given circumstance is an organic, living decision – a relational decision – which may change moment to moment, being affected by many variables. In other words, it’s complicated. There is a time when refusing a request is the loving thing to do and a time when deferring to a request is the loving action.
Howzabout an example?
My boys were at youth group a few weeks back. Most of the fathers of the boys were present as my church places immense value on the raising of children in community. I give this approach an enthusiastic two thumbs up, but it does come with raised eyebrows every now and again and forces parental differences to the surface. I was working the emergency department that night, however, keeping Fort Collins free from mild discomfort, and could not attend. At the end of the meeting, my boys were confronted by one of the dads, who asked them to put their masks on, and, having already asked once before, was now feeling “unsafe” around them.
Unsafe. This was the word allegedly used. A forty year old, healthy man feeling unsafe about a virus which has a 99.9% survivability rate for his demographic. So the question is, does loving his man mean deferring to his request and wearing a mask?
Now, as a side point, if safety from viral contraction is high on the priority list, a gymnasium full of sweaty, mouth-breathing, cheetoh-fingered, middle schoolers is not a bastion of defense against transmissible illness. Just sayin’. But aside from that, what does it mean to love my brother in this circumstance? If it’s not doing what they ask, to what standard do I refer to?
A Jewish scribe overheard Jesus muzzling the Sadducees after attempting to trip him up some highly contrived resurrection trivia. The scribe and his fellow scribblers had been debating which is the greatest commandment and so got in line for the Q&A and asked the Lord, of all the commandments of Moses, which is the greatest? (I wonder if there was at least one scribe, the one who wore his phylactery backwards, who was like “I think the greatest commandment is ‘do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk'” and all the other scribes were like, “Shut up, Shmuel, you’re just saying that to be different. And pull up your prayer shawl, your tassels are dragging.”) Jesus answers the scribe, “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.”
The first point to observe is that the second commandment comes after the first, meaning if we are not loving the Lord God with all our being, any attempt to love our neighbor is building a house without a foundation. In fact, a good case could be made that all the craziness of progressive America is because the first commandment has been removed by popular vote, leaving the second command to grow cancerous. This is precisely what has happened, in my opinion, but this is not primarily what I want to speak about. I am more interested in how those of us who do have the first commandments in its proper place are to act on the second.
The reference Jesus gives of how to love our neighbors is ourselves. This recognizes the inherent proclivity we have toward self preservation, acting in self interest to seek our best good. In any given situation, we do some psychical calculus to figure how to maximize our own joy. When we love our neighbor, we do the same calculus then apply this desire for those around us.
In Luke 10:25, a lawyer asks Jesus who exactly is his neighbor. Jesus tells him a story of the Good Samaritan.
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “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 neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
Jesus answers the question who is my neighbor? The answer is whoever happens to be to your left and right at the time, even a cultural enemy. But there is another application as well, namely, how to love your neighbor. This victim didn’t need money; tossing him a few shekels of silver would have changed his situation zero percent. Neither did he need a word of encouragement in a trying time. He needed someone to address the most obvious problem, which was caring for his wounds and feeding him. He needed someone to see the vultures circling overhead, to recognize the scent of separation on the wind, to perceive the death.
Death is separation. The cleaving of body from soul is physical death and the object of our current phantasmagoric fascination with covid. The separation of the spirit from God is eternal death. Anxiety is the pulling apart into pieces of the self into sundry false realities – the disintegration of self. Divorce is the death of a marriage. Death is the pervasive experience of humans and our chief fear and slave master.
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. Hebrews 2:15
One way we can love our neighbors is to find where the death is occurring, and bring life to it through love. This is what the Samaritan did. Jesus also saved us from the looming eternal death which haunted us.
It can be difficult to know how to best love our neighbors sometimes. Situations are complex and multi layered. It may be helpful to ask ourselves, where is the real death occurring here? If, like in the parable, it is the obvious threat of physical death, the separation of body and soul, then we love it into unity by paying for his hospital stay, or saving the person from existential threats.
But what of my 40 year-old, healthy, strapping, young father? What kind of death is circling overhead? Is it the physical separation of body and soul, or the spiritual pulling apart by anxiety? It is the latter. My response to this dismemberment by anxiety is to not put on a mask, but instead love him in a way I would want to be loved, which is to have another man tell me to gird up the loins of my mind, fear not, and to bring the unity of mind that peace achieves. Indeed, there are things which gnaw at a man worse than dying.
And so when we love our neighbors we do so in a way which is desirous to meet their greatest need, at the same time bounded by the holiness which is brought by preeminent love for God. When we love our neighbor in this order, God first, neighbor second, it precludes us from catering to lusts, fears, or greeds masquerading as needs. Toggling our spiritual eyes to see where the greatest separation is occuring can be a key to helping us discern how best to love our neighbor in tricky situations.
Thought Butter 