LICC - Word for the Week - So, how do we love our neighbour

word for the week - so, how do we love our neighbour?

You neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practised the latter without leaving the former undone. Luke 11:42

On Thursday we are exercising a hard won freedom. We are practising justice and love. That all should have an equal right to democratic participation in government is justice and justice hard won, because battle after battle had to be fought over the exclusions – commoners, the poor, and women. We should remember that even here in the UK we have not yet reached the centenary of universal adult suffrage.

Yet as we listen to the media-orchestrated election campaign, it seems very easy to lose sight of what justice really means. Instead of social good for all, the emphasis is too often on my individual right to choose what suits me best. We are asked to vote for those who will allow us to keep more of our money; who will save our hospital; who will build new homes, but away from our back yard.

Love and justice are together the foundation of moral community, the command of God, the ‘givens’ of the way we are called to steward this world and all its systems. In voting we are obeying the command to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. We are choosing the best way on offer to create the conditions for all human flourishing. We are asking those we elect to tax us, so that we can provide communally the resources to give others, as well as ourselves, the bases for a reasonable life.

The command to love our neighbour would be far easier to obey if it did simply mean being nice to the people next door. But, as a summary of the whole law, it places on us all a personal and communal responsibility to fulfil a duty of care to all six billion human beings and their descendants. Justice and love are involved in all good government, in progressive taxation, in a generous aid and development budget, in the protection of the environment, and therefore we should welcome even uncomfortable measures that serve the good of all.

Margaret Killingray