In a recent interview Vice President JD Vance commented on the Christian ethic for prioritizing compassion that has people divided. In response to the immigration debate his response was as followed:

I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far-left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders.

The response of progressive Christians has been a two-pronged rebuttal. The first rebuttal points out that the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:25-37) teaches exactly the opposite. In the parable, Jesus explains that everyone is our neighbor and deserves compassion and love. The point being made by progressives is that immigrants are our neighbors and should not be discriminated against. More specifically the thrust of the argument is that everyone is our neighbor and to assume a hierarchy goes against the teaching of Christ.

The second rebuttal uses Matthew 12:46-50 as a proof text to demonstrate that Jesus championed discipleship and fidelity to God the Father over one’s own family. The point is that Christians should not privilege love and compassion to one sphere of people over another.

It is my contention that these rebuttals latch on to kernels of truth and then extrapolate those kernels to such an absurd degree that the principal meaning of these passages of Scripture is lost and merely used to justify an idealistic narrative of love that is not only theologically and Scriptural bereft of accuracy, but is an ethic not lived out by anyone on a practical level.

ADDRESSING THE PROGRESSIVE VIEW

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

The problem with appealing to the Good Samaritan is that while Jesus emphasizes that everyone is our neighbor, He does not stress that everyone must receive the same degree of love or help. For example, let us say that someone was laying on the other side of the road when the Samaritan was passing by. What if it was his father or his best friend or spouse? Would we be inclined to praise him if he chose to put the injured Jew on his donkey instead of those who are directly under his care and to whom he is responsible?

To espouse that he could simply fit two people on his donkey is to avoid the heart of the question and exposes a charmed life of which someone has never been put in a position to make a difficult either/or decision. Such circumstances happen all the time and people do the best they can.

The second problem with misappropriating this parable is that Jesus is addressing a sentiment that tries to justify withholding love altogether to certain people which should not be confused with an ethic of properly ordering love along with our responsibilities to those around us.

Augustine and Thomas Aquinas were incredibly influential Church Fathers who taught the same thing which is called ordo amoris, which means ‘rightly ordered loves.’ In Summua Theologiae II Aquinas writes: “On this respect we love all men equally out of charity: because we wish them all one same generic good, namely everlasting happiness. Secondly love is said to be greater through its action being more intense: and in this way we ought not to love all equally” (STh q. 26, a. 6). The idea is that there is an order of love and subsequent responsibilities for Christians.

This ethic is not only established in church history but also in Scripture. Take for example Paul’s teaching in 1 Timothy 5:8: “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Notice that Paul teaches a comprehensive ethic to love everyone but “especially” one’s own family. He even goes so far as to say that refusing to take care of one’s own family makes such a person worse than an unbeliever. To be sure, if one cannot properly love their own family then it raises doubts about their capacity to properly love strangers.

Now such a view is sure to draw the ire of those who refuse to admit that they love some more than others. They interpret such an ethic as unkind and selfish. Yet this is how we all live bar none. Someone might claim and even believe that they love everyone equally and yet they do not pay for the medical bills of total strangers instead of their own families. They do not open their homes to total strangers and give them their beds and best clothes and vast resources. They especially do not do this at the expense of their own children or spouses.

The reality is that we all practically show more love to those around us than those who are not. This fact should be distinguished from the mere feeling of love for faceless strangers that never manifests into tangible action.

We simply cannot love everyone at the same capacity even if that was our genuine desire. Let us say for example that you have one-hundred dollars and twenty people who need food. In order to do the most good that you can, hard decisions will need to be made. If a hot lunch cost ten dollars then you can only buy lunch for ten people, which would require you to limit the amount of people you help. If you decide to buy people snacks at half the cost to help all twenty people then you would not be providing the necessary food for their nourishment and health, which would of course be less helpful.

Jesus does teach us to love our neighbors and we must do that without question or reservation. We are even called to love our very enemies which certainly means that we should love the stranger and the immigrant. With that being said it needs to be understood that the call to love people without exception in no way suggests that we should love some at the expense of others or somehow circumvent our responsibilities to those who are a part of our personal circles. We are fully capable of loving the world while holding a special place in our hearts for certain people.

Jesus’ True Family

The flaw of the second argument regarding Jesus’ statement that “whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother” (Mt. 12: 50) is that such an argument conveniently leaves out the fact that those who hold a higher position than family must place their faith in Jesus Christ and do the will of God. So, already there is an obvious hierarchy in the same text being used to demonstrate that there is no hierarchy!

Again those who use this passage to propound some kind of hard egalitarian ethic of love and compassion, which ignores clear distinctions, are guilty of taking a truth expressed in Scripture and exploiting it for their own ends. Jesus may have stressed the spiritual family over the blood-related family but the emphasis is not that Christians should love everyone with the same commitment and passion without any distinction, but instead the point is that there is a clear ordering of love.

Of course someone might retort that the greatest commandment says that we must love our neighbors as ourselves. However, this is sloppy theology that ignores the full context of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus actually said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (Mt. 22:37-40). We are to love God first and foremost because that is the greatest commandment. The second is like it but it is not the same.

From the very beginning there is a priority of lived out love. We are created to love God first and foremost and the spheres of love extend out from there. The Ten Commandments give special attention to honoring one’s own parents while other passages mention harsh punishments for ignoring such a commandment. This particularity is further evidence of a proper ordering of love within the Christian’s life.

If this passage of Scripture is employed to justify loose immigration policies then such a move is suspect. If such a proof text is to be used with integrity then it should be understood that only immigrants who have committed themselves to the will of the triune God should have a more prominent distinction than one’s own family.

A PROPER ORDERING OF LOVE

I believe that most people at least intuitively understand that we should love everyone and help as many people as possible. Though I also believe that most people understand that it would be morally reprehensible to shortchange those we are responsible to in order to offer some semblance of help to a vast number of people to whom we are less responsible. That says nothing of their worth, it merely takes a reasoned and practical approach to love.

The reality is that there are spheres of people we are more responsible towards. We love God first and foremost and everything we do stems from that central love. Then we love our family and friends and the spheres continue to expand outward reaching out to the world. We are to help when and how we can but not at the expense of others and especially those who are under our charge.

The Good Samaritan does teach us to love everyone and we should. Though that does not mean that believers should hold to an egalitarian ethic that is absolutely equal and even across the board at all cost. In fact, it is impossible to live out that ethic. While many people subjectively possess an internal affection towards everyone, the reality is that the love they feel is a mere emotion that does not manifest into tangible action. We all have limited time, energy, and resources, and while we share them to the best of our abilities, our families, friends, fellow citizens, and so forth will always get the lion’s share of what we can offer.

To return to the Good Samaritan that is precisely what Jesus teaches. To illustrate my point it will be helpful to consider the Greek in this passage. In the Greek the word used for “neighbor” is πλησίον (plēsion) and means ‘near’ or ‘nearby’ and impacts the context of the parable. The Samaritan did not start a charity or set out to change systemic injustice (although such things are not bad in and of themselves), but instead he refused to turn his back on someone in need who was nearby. To love our neighbors means to love those who God has placed in front of us. We can certainly love people from afar and often we do, but the meaning of this parable is to take care of people who God puts in our path when we have the means to do so.

That most certainly means the foreigner or stranger. If they are in our midst then we do have an obligation to help them insofar as possible. Just because there is a proper ordering of love does not mean that Christians can pick and choose who they help or show disdain for a particular group of people. If we have the opportunity and the means to take care of someone in our midst then we absolutely must do whatever we can to show compassion and help. To do otherwise is to ignore the teaching of Jesus Christ.

Time and again God reminds the Israelites to take care of the stranger because they were once strangers in a foreign land. That admonition was not exclusive to the Israelites and it does not have an expiration date. To be sure, we were all once foreigners but due to God’s grace we have been given citizenship into the heavenly kingdom.

Now, none of this means that the United States should have reckless and loose immigration policies. Nor does it mean that we can artificially manufacture putting people in our path in order to justify immigration policies in the name of loving our neighbors. What it does mean is that we should love any and everyone who crosses our path because God has shown us how to love in such a way and in those moments we are provided the opportunity to be like Jesus.