What Happened to "Love Thy Neighbor?"
"I come home and see Abner and M'rye's house burned to the ground, and I wonder what happened to "Love Thy Neighbor"?" Cries Jedidiah(Ni) Hagadorn after returning home to a town rife with conflict and embitterment in 2013 Civil War era movie Copperhead.
In face of this current madness, I find myself wondering the same thing. I look around at all the busybodies of today, meddling in affairs that don't concern them. They're people who are going around telling other people what they think, what they mean, and what they're doing. They're those who make it their business to be sure that everyone else thinks and acts precisely the way they do.
I often wonder whether these people lie awake at night fretting and worrying that someone somewhere might just be having a whole lot of honest, innocent fun.
I look out at the current scene, people going around and blaming everyone else for their own problems. Conservatives slamming liberals, liberals calling conservatives dirty names, mask-wearers teaming up against non-mask-wearers, and vise-versa, and I wonder to myself, "What happened to "love thy neighbor as thyself?"
"Sure, when the sun's out and the crops are high, and our neighbor agrees with everything we say, we love him fine," Ni continues, "But then maybe he gets a little unruly, disagreeable, or maybe he just has a different way of thinking, and all of a sudden we don't love our neighbor so much anymore."
I look around at everyone calling everyone else racist, at people holding riots and trying to abolish the police, I see businesses being burned to the ground, and the proverbial witch hunt calling people racist who never had an anti-race supposition in their lives, and I ask myself, what happened to love thy neighbor?
I step on Facebook and see people calling our president all sorts of things, and blaming him for all their problems, while others, who seem to worship before his shrine, post words that cut and sting for anyone else who mightn't do the same, and I ask with an aching heart, "What happened to "Love thy neighbor as thyself?"
It seems to me that all of us in this present age have spent a lot of time sticking our spades in other people's flower beds, we've cast the blame from ourselves using vague language, complicated psychology, and a whole lot of yelling and sign waving, and I keep wondering, what would happen if we all ignored some of the complexity, and vagaries of the issue and just focused on the second-greatest commandment given to us by our Lord, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
What if we stopped trying to analyze and sort out other people's brains? What if we removed our fingers from other people's pies? What if we remembered that for every finger we point at someone else there are three pointing back at us? What if we just focused on loving the Lord and loving our neighbor?
C.S. Lewis notes this problem of unnecessarily complicated an issue in his book Screwtape Letters where he says,
"The Enemy(meaning God) loves platitudes...He wants men to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? Is it prudent? Is it possible? Now if we(meaning the devil) can keep men asking "Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way History is going?" they will neglect the relevant questions. And the questions they do ask are, of course, unanswerable; for they do not know the future, and what the future will be depends very largely on just those choices which they now invoke the future to help them make. As a result, we have the better chance to slip in and bend them to the action we have already decided on."(Lewis 129-130)
You see, we live in a world of constant distraction and blameshifting, "Oh, it's those people who have no regard for the health of others,"
"It's those whites who are so privileged."
"It's those blacks who are making a big deal over nothing."
"It's those fear-mongerers who don't care that I have a family to feed."
"It's that president who's messing up our country."
"It' all those liberals trying to drive our country into socialism."
"It's all those conservative people who want to hold us back."
Can we not see how useless and distracting this all is? Since when have you ever been convinced of anything by seeing someone wave a sign at a street corner? Since when have you ever become a better person by telling someone else it's his problem? Since when has trying to tow the line for one party or movement over another ever gotten anyone anywhere?
The ultimate cure to racism, to differing opinions, to disputes on viruses, is not more masks or fewer, not white shaming, reparations, or becoming more aware of anything, unless it is how we have failed to love our neighbor as ourselves.
The ultimate cure for all of this is the gospel. The law and the prophets, which, as Jesus stated very plainly can be summed up in two commands, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
I just came back from visiting a good friend in Arizona. Hence all the seemingly unrelated photos.
We did a lot of hiking and sightseeing, including my first ever visit to the grand canyon. This truly grand work of nature stands as a reminder to me that though we toil and moil through the struggles of life, God is forever at perfect peace, that He still leaves in this fallen world reminders - and such glorious reminders they are - of His beauty and goodness. We can trust Him to be faithful and lead us safely through these times. We can trust him to take care of those other people we're so furious about it. Let's settle down, enjoy the life we've been given, love God, and love our neighbor.
I'll close with this lovely theme from the movie Copperhead.
To quote Ni Hagadorn one last time, "Maybe in the midst of all this madness, we can start by loving our neighbor."
Until I write again,
~ Christianna
Works Cited
Copperhead. Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell, Swordspoint Productions, 28 June 2013
Lewis, C.S., The Screwtape Letters. Westwood, Barbour And Company, Inc., 16 November 1985.
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