As a person of faith, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about “how best do I love my neighbor?” Most religions have a similar care for neighbor. I know my friends who are atheists have well-formed moral and ethical principles in their own lives.
For me, it is a command and not merely a suggestion. This command also includes loving the neighbors I don’t want to like, and the ones I don’t necessarily want to know, and the ones whose opinions are diametrically opposed to my own. I’d like to put conditions on who I must care about. I think many of us share thoughts about those conditions. It is one of the reasons why communities try to keep unhoused people off the streets and out of sight. It’s why we would rather not know the reason why refugees need homes. It would be easier to assume a story about them.
I have recently learned that many states make it nearly impossible for someone who has “done their time” for a felony and been released from prison to get back into the mainstream of life. They often have little in terms of opportunity when they get out of prison. State laws affect their abilities to apply for jobs, housing, and more, making it more difficult to live independently. Did they pay their debt to society or not?
There are systems that few of us think about that keep some people down. Have you ever looked up the human cost of having a banana for breakfast? Unless it is organic (and preferably local) it is likely that there are people paying a large personal cost to get that fruit to our tables. The people harvesting the fruit earn meager wages and suffer terrible working conditions and heavy pesticide exposure. But if a person cannot afford organic and wants to feed their family a nutritious fruit, you can’t do much better than the humble already packaged banana. What is it to love my neighbor when there are personal, economic, and systemic ethical concerns?
So, when there are competing interests, which neighbor do I love, if that is still my goal? Maybe a more attainable goal would be to “do no harm.” No harm – like the school of thought of the traditional Hippocratic oath of the medical field. I only learned recently that the original oath from several centuries BCE included a promise to “never use a knife.” The ancient Greeks apparently didn’t know anything about modern sanitation, sterilization, or surgical standards, so it was safest not to cut into anyone. Doing so would have caused harm. Today, in 2024, I am often grateful for surgeons who have saved the lives of people close to me.
I have learned over the years though, that it is often naïve to think that doing no harm is even possible. If “do no harm” is also relatively subjective in it’s application, what is left? Do the least harm possible? Do I just take care of me and mine, or do I concern myself with local and global systems that cause harm to people with little access to voice, vote, or opportunity?
These considerations cross virtually every aspect of our lives. There are moral and ethical considerations to just about everything – personal wellness, community wellness, global issues, justice issues, economic, ecological, political, and the victims of all these issues who remain with little voice – the refugees, the displaced, and all those suffering the effects of poverty and hunger.
Sometimes it seems too overwhelming. There seems to be a harm/cost factor to nearly every decision we make. We cannot allow ourselves the luxury of becoming numb to harm because it is always around us in abundance. We cannot retreat into sound bites. We can always do something.
So, what do we do? Do not give up. Pick a few goals. We are nearly a month away from in-person voting in a presidential year. As I look around my neighborhood, I see signs supporting lots of different viewpoints. On November 6, we will all wake up and still be neighbors regardless of the election results. Here are a few basics.
- Do not dehumanize other people. Usually, we have more in common than not. Consider the question of “who benefits by this decision?” Have I considered other factors? Is there a “common good” element involved?
- Check yourself on whether you are listening to facts or opinions about a matter.
- Beware of sound bites. If a few words sound a little beyond belief, they probably are.
- Seek out truth. If you read studies, check the sources and find out who funded the studies.
- Be more curious than judgmental.
Loving the neighbor, even imperfectly, is worth the effort.
Pamela Marolla is pastor at First Lutheran Church in Galesburg and assistant to the Bishop for the Northern Illinois Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Western Illinois University or Tri States Public Radio.
Diverse viewpoints are welcomed and encouraged.