Who is My Neighbor?

I’m confident there’s something greater than us out there. Not a deity that directs our daily lives: that abdicates our individual responsibility. Nor something fashioned in our own image and likeness: that’s simply a narcissistic failure of imagination. I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of god. But so am I. And so are you. And so, from a religious perspective, I’m no Christian.

Yet I am culturally Christian. Steeped in its fundamental moral and ethical traditions. The Bible. The parables. The ten commandments. I don’t adhere to every fable: the celebration of the prodigal son at the expense of the steadfast one is simply appalling. Yet my moral compass points New Testament north. Less Hammurabi’s eye for an eye. More Gospel Matthew, bent toward forgiveness.

One cornerstone of cultural Christianity is, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” I suppose in Palestine circa AD Zero, your neighbor was pretty easy to identify. The extents to which anyone walked was limited; everyone you met was your neighbor and it behooved you to treat them well. You had zilch influence on anyone beyond your immediate geography. They were out of scope.

The first part of the definition for ‘neighbor’ still holds. The people who live in my immediate proximity, who walk the same sidewalks and attend the same schools are certainly my neighbors. Beyond that, the definition gets muddy.