Charity Begins Where?

You may have noticed that there has been a big flurry of activity online recently about comments Vice President J D Vance made about the prioritisation of compassion for those nearest to us. He goes on to claim that those 'a lot of the far left' - which appears to mean to the Trump administration anyone more moderate than them - have inverted the principle. He claims the 'far left' hate their own and prioritize people from other nations. 

Now clearly that is a piece of political rhetoric, aiming to justify a principle to move more and more to an "America first" policy stance, and to justify ever more stringent action on undocumented people within the USA. What was different with Vance, compared to Trump, is that he attempted a theological justification of his policies.

He drew on the notion of ordo amoris (order of love) from St Augustine to explain and justify the order of priorities he espouses. This notion of ordo amoris is present in City of God Book XV where the ordering of love is related to sin and morality. The love of the wrong things is equivalenced to sin. For example in describing the earthly (for that read fallen and sinful) city Augustine writes:

"And this is the characteristic of the earthly city, that it worships God or gods who may aid it in reigning victoriously and peacefully on earth not through love of doing good, but through lust of rule." (Book XV.7)"

Of course, this has its roots in Scripture, where the love of money is described as the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10) and God's law for right living is summarised by Jesus as loving God and loving neighbour (Luke 10:25-28). Orderly love has God and neighbour as its primary focus and disorderly love is devoted to mammon (Matthew. 6:24).

This still begs the question as to whether some people merit love more than others. St Thomas Aquinas explored these question in his Summa Theologica (also knows as Summa Theologiae). Aquinas isn't an easy read, but he explores theological issues by posing and addressing a series of questions. In Summa Theologica Book 2, part 2, question 26 he explores questions which ask should you love A more than B with a series of candidates for A & B.

Aquinas suggests that it is reasonable to have an ordering of priority:

"We must, therefore, say that, even as regards the affection we ought to love one neighbour more than another. The reason is that, since the principle of love is God, and the person who loves, it must needs be that the affection of love increases in proportion to the nearness to one or the other of those principles. For as we stated above, wherever we find a principle, order depends on relation to that principle." (ST II.II.Q26.Article 6)

Aquinas argues that 'greater affection' for those closest to us is an inevitable consequence of everyday life - and is also moral. However, we must note that he doesn't say that it follows that there should be no 'affection' for those who are distant. So whilst a first impression suggests Aquinas is supporting Vance's position, there is a sting in the tail for the Vice-president. If his treatment of the stranger, the alien, the refugee and the migrant is devoid of 'affection' then it ethically falls short, according to Aquinas.

Likewise in Scripture, whilst the love within the family and good neighbourliness within a community are clearly encouraged, there is also a strong strand of teaching pointing to others - respect for the alien, hospitality to all, and care of the vulnerable. For example, widows and orphans get highlighted (e.g. Malachi 3:5, James 1:27). In the teachings of Jesus, we encounter the need to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors (Matthew 5:44)

But what about neighbours? In Luke, immediately after Jesus summarises the law as loving God and loving neighbour, he is asked who should be seen as a neighbour (Luke 10:29). Jesus responds by telling the parable we know as the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37).

For context, we should note that in New Testament time, the relationship between Jews and Samaritans was not good. We know from John's gospel (John 4:9) that a Samaritan woman was astonished that Jesus - a Jew - would ask her for a drink, share a vessel and receive hospitality from her. In Luke 17:11-19, when Jesus heals ten lepers, only one returns to thank him, and Jesus hold him up as a good example. However, he refers to him as a "foreigner" (Luke 11:18) indicating that he was perceived by the community as somehow 'other'.

Taking this into the parable, the Good Samaritan is often read as a story of one person being kind to a man who has been attacked and robbed, when others weren't. Sometimes a point is made about religious hypocrisy, as it is a priest and a Levite who walk by before the Samaritan arrives. What is sometimes missed is how controversial it would have been to make the Samaritan the good guy. Clearly the conclusion Jesus wants the questioner in Luke 10:29 to arrive it is that the Samaritan is the neighbour, and this would have been hard to swallow. We can see it in the closure of the parable, as Jesus asks who was the neighbour in the story (10:36). The response he gets is "the one who showed him mercy" (10:37). It strongly suggests that the man couldn't bring himself to say "the Samaritan". 

What we can be clear about in that story is that Christians can't support a definition of neighbour that is narrow, confined to a small locality, or to an ethnicity or faith allegiance. It is the nature of human relationships that we can't feel the same level of concern for everyone in a universal way that we feel for people who are close to us. However, I think the Scriptures leave us no choice but to see that we have a duty of care to all our neighbours - whether they are close at hand or far away, whether they are citizens of our our country or far from their home.

Over the years I have met quite a few people who have said to me "charity begins at home". In a number of situations, I wondered whether home is where it stopped; in a few cases I even wondered whether it even made it to their home. We may well learn charity (Aquinas' affection or the Bible's agape) at home, but the right thing to do is to learn from that specific situation and apply it to our attitudes and understanding of all people.