Second Commandment

Matthew 22:39 - “The second is like it; you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

I think this is a complex commandment. How do we love our neighbor? Who is our neighbor? Isn’t loving ourselves selfish? This latter attitude is one lesson I picked up in childhood. Loving ourselves is selfish; it’s a tough lesson to unlearn. Having lupus has taught me lot about loving myself; nothing like a chronic illness to rearrange a person’s priorities. I learned that taking care of myself meant that I could feel better more often. “Pushing through” only made me feel worse and for longer periods of time. I have learned to live within the limits of my body.

If I go outside those limits, I’m no use to anyone, even myself. Think of the pre-flight instructions flight attendants go through. They always remind us that when travelling with children we should secure our own oxygen mask first. That seems selfish on the surface. It’s only by thinking it through that we see the wisdom. They remind us every time because taking care of ourselves first is not our natural reaction. If it were, they wouldn’t have to remind us. Yet, we cannot give something we don’ t have. We cannot love our neighbor without loving ourselves first – even a little bit.

I wrote a while ago about Calvin’s idea that in order to know God, we must know ourselves, and vice versa. The same is true of our neighbors. We cannot know or love them without first knowing and loving ourselves. We come to understand the complexities of others as we come to understand our own. Accepting and loving who we are leads to accepting and loving our neighbors.

One more thing is required – knowledge of how systems set in place by our predecessors affect each of us differently. Systematic racism in the US is baked into our society. We cannot escape it just by not being overtly racist. Without understanding the dynamic this has set up between Black people and ‘white’ people, we will never understand our Black neighbors enough to love them. It’s the same with white supremacists and those that oppose them. True understanding recognizes that we are all caught up in the web of systemic racism; we are all its victims. Whether we profit or not, systemic racism damages us all.

This is a hard thing for ‘white’ people to hear. We do not want to think about how we or our ancestors (grandparents!) profited from the GI bill only extending benefits to ‘white’ Americans. We do not want to think that this nation was built on the backs of enslaved African people. We want to think of only the good stories, but unless we confront our past and learn from it, we will continue to be a divided nation. This is a hard conversation to bring out into the disinfecting rays of the sun. It makes everyone feel vulnerable, uncomfortable, or even unsafe. However, loving our neighbor (which includes everyone!) requires that we learn from our personal history and our shared history. Fulfilling this second commandment requires that we face up to the horrors of the past and begin to address the continuing trauma of the present.

The only way out is through.