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Benny Cardullo: Just what did Jesus mean by ‘your neighbor'?

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Black Lives Matter protest organizer John Sullivan, hugs one of the armed Keepers of Liberty, after inviting him to come up and say a few words during a demonstration on Center Street in Provo, Wednesday July 1, 2020.

Who do you envision when you hear the word, “neighbor?”

Growing up in Provo, Utah, my neighbors looked like one another, they spoke like one another, they worshiped like one another, and they came from similar economic and social backgrounds as one another. They were like one another, and in reality, a lot like me.

Thus, when the Bible taught, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” I thought I knew who Christ was referring to, I didn’t even question it. I assumed to understand my neighbors because, after all, they were just like me. There was someone however who did question what Christ meant by “neighbor,” a lawyer, who asked him directly, “And who is my neighbor?”

In response, Christ delivered the Parable of The Good Samaritan.

In the Parable of The Good Samaritan, Jesus Christ taught that loving your neighbor means more than loving those in your homogenous and socially segregated neighborhood. Loving your neighbor means more than being kind to those you meet at the grocery store or the neighborhood park. Loving your neighbor means more than being respectful, generous, and tolerant.

Christ taught that our neighbors are not the people who are most like us, but the ones who are most different than us. Our neighbors are the people our own social circles have rejected, and in order to love them, we must make space for them in our lives, we must get close to them both mentally and physically.

In America today, our neighbors are being oppressed by prejudice systems. Our neighbors are being killed and incarcerated in part due to the pigment of their skin, our neighbors are being discriminated against based on who they love and how they identify, and our neighbors are being separated from their families and denied refuge and safety. Marginalized and abused, our neighbors are calling out in pain, anger, and frustration, yet too many of us cannot see past our own experiences to realize what is really happening in our nation.

Our neighbors are teaching us how to love them, and it is time to listen and respond:

  • Loving your neighbor means, “creating a world free of anti-Blackness, where every Black person has the social, economic, and political power to thrive” — Black Lives Matter.

  • Loving your neighbor means you are “committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society” — Equal Justice Initiative.

  • Loving your neighbor means creating, “a world where lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people can live openly without discrimination and enjoy equal rights, personal autonomy, and freedom of expression and association” — American Civil Liberties Union.

  • Loving your neighbor means ensuring, “The fundamental constitutional protections of due process and equal protection embodied in our Constitution and Bill of Rights apply to every person, regardless of immigration status.” — ACLU.

  • Loving your neighbor means, “Striving for an America free of discrimination against people with disabilities, where they are valued, integrated members of society with full access to education, homes, health care, jobs, voting, and beyond” — ACLU.

Many of us feel trapped by the narrow framework of the dominant liberal and conservative views of equality in America. Many of us feel worn out, intellectually debilitated, morally disempowered and personally depressed/

To love is hard, and if we are to love our neighbor as Christ taught, it will require sacrifice, inconvenience and emotional and physical pain in order to ensure every person in America is provided fair and equitable treatment under the law and in our communities.

Benny Cardullo

Benny Cardullo graduated with a BA in communications from the University of Utah in 2019. He will start an MSc of gender (sexuality) at The London School of Economics and Political Science this fall, where he will interrogate and research how LGBTQ+ individuals navigate conservative, religious contexts and whether and how these apparently divergent imperatives and sensibilities might be brought into alignment.