“How do I love my neighbor who is an ICE agent? Who works for the FBI and is covering up the actions in Minneapolis? Who serves in Congress to suppress the outrage of the American people?”
I don’t have an easy answer if we think love is only a feeling. It is, of course, that.
But it is much more.
It is taking care to make your home safe for your infant or your elderly relative living with you. It is taking care to clean your hands before you handle serving food to people. It is taking care of the car you drive so that it does not leak oil into our drinking water. It is taking care to accept taxes as the price to pay for fire protects, safe roads, and competent civil services. It is taking care to vote for candidates who will serve the people best despite their opinions that might not agree with you.
And it is taking care to hold your neighbor accountable for crimes against humanity.
That is expressed not just in hoping for them to be arrested, charged, tried, and, if found guilty of such crimes, imprisoned or made to serve out some form of civil restitution.
It is expressed in speaking up to your neighborhood and speaking to your neighbor about the accountability we all have as humans to do what is right, and to take care of our world and our neighbors so that we all prosper.
Some will use religion to buttress their conversations about doing right. Some will point to philosophical or political arguments about the ways to achieve a just and honest society.
But the ultimate ground is our moral sense that it is not right to harm my neighbor by the actions of destruction or the inaction of neglect.
This is something most people feel innately as part of their humanity. For those of us with a religious background, we call this the Imago Dei—the image of God that is part of our constitution as human beings that bears witness of right and wrong, good and evil. For those of us without a religious background, we call it the general moral sense of most people based upon the years of the evolution of the human species to be formed with this innate sense of moral duty.
The urge for moral duty is, I think, something that marks us as human, but it is not restricted to humans. We see it in the way animals care for their young, in the way they raise their offspring, in the way they tend to the sick among them.
It is that we call into being when we do our moral duty to speak out to our neighbors to do right by other people so that we all show care for one another.
It is something most of us are taught in our homes from an early age, taught in our schools, taught in our religious assemblies, and taught in our social environments.
Do what is right, even when it’s hard.
Take care of others, even when it’s hard.
Be kind to those who are struggling to catch up and stay with you, even when it’s hard.
It’s not something new when we hear it, and not something new when we say it.
It is just a reminder of our humanity.
And it is the way to love our neighbors when they commit atrocities. “Here are the standards of human connections, and when you do this, you break those connections to harm someone. And that action for harm comes with consequences, not acceptance.”
Loving your neighbor does mean holding them accountable to our common principles and common humanity, and it does mean that there is a time when the consequences of violence and terror and destruction will be paid by those who commit the acts.
Warning your neighbor away from the actions is a way to show love by warning them away from the consequences.
