Loving your neighbour in a global world

Should we prioritise our fellow citizens over those from other countries?

Last week, those of us on X witnessed something rather bizarre: a spat between the Vice President of the USA, J.D. Vance, and former British politician Rory Stewart. It began with someone quoting an interview with Vance where he said that the Christian concept of ethics was to love your family first and foremost, then your neighbour, then your community, then your fellow citizens, and only then the rest of the world. Rory Stewart responded, calling it a “bizarre take” on John 15:12-13 (“love each other as I have loved you”), and implying that Vance was contradicting Jesus.

Vance responded on X, telling Stewart to search for the “ordo amoris”, and said that it was “basic common sense”:

A lot of people have responded to this little spat. For example, James Orr wrote a helpful piece looking at the “ordo amoris” and how Vance is simply stating the obvious. Glen Scrivener recorded a piece on Speak Life trying to do a balanced piece about both ‘sides’ of this issue:

I say ‘trying’ to do a balanced piece because, although Glen said some helpful things, I found Glen’s presentation unsatisfying. I felt like he was trying to present it as a choice between two good and equal sides (“grace” vs “nature”), and said that both sides could get it wrong. He criticised virtue signalling, but he also criticised those who only want to love their own. I think it was helpful as far as it went, but there’s far more to say — especially when it comes to the kind of issues Vance was talking about.

I haven’t found many people trying to think through these issues from a Christian perspective while paying attention to what’s going on in the world and attending to the complexities involved. What I’d like to do in this post is to begin exploring some of those complexities and hopefully bringing some light to this important discussion.

Let’s start by thinking about what it means to love your neighbour.

Who is my neighbour?

Jesus taught us that the second greatest commandment was “love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:36-40). (The first greatest commandment is to love God with our heart, soul, mind and strength.) You could say that love encompasses everything that God wants from us. As Paul puts it: “Love does no harm to a neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10).

The million-dollar question is, of course, who is my neighbour? Throughout history people have sought to justify themselves by counting some people as neighbours, and other people as enemies. As Jesus quotes the Pharisees’ teaching, “love your neighbour but hate your enemy” (Matthew 5:43).

The most famous answer to the question is found in the parable of the good samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). There, Jesus tells the story of someone who simply loved another as he had opportunity. The message, in a nutshell, is simply to love those who God puts in our way. Your neighbour is the person right there in front of you. I think this is a profound truth: Glen quoted in his video the proverb, “everyone wants to save the world; no-one wants to put the bins out.” This is good wisdom: we are not called to save the world — as if any of us could do that — we are called simply to love those God puts in our way.

However, the advent of mass media and the internet have raised questions about this which we didn’t have before. The media has given us a window into the situation of people in other countries that we simply didn’t have 100 years ago. Today, we are very aware of refugees and asylum seekers seeking safety in our country. We are very aware of wars and unrest happening around the world.

How do we love our neighbour in this new, global, world? You’d have to have a heart of stone not to have compassion on people when you see the hardships they are going through. Surely we ought to do something?

Let’s move on to thinking about the role of nation states when it comes to loving our neighbour.

The role of nation states

The first thing to say is that there is a difference between love on an individual level and love on a collective level. In fact, I don’t think it is appropriate to talk about ‘love’ when it comes to nation-states: love is by definition personal. That said, God does demand that nation-states act with justice and righteousness, which are closely related concepts. I was struck reading through Ezekiel recently how God judged Edom because Edom “rejoiced when the inheritance of Israel became desolate” (Ezekiel 35:15). Kings are warned to celebrate the rule of the Messiah (Psalm 2).

So, although nations cannot love, they can go wrong. In particular, when a nation turns away from God to idols, when a nation rejects God’s laws, it does wrong. This is why kings and rulers are established by God to enact justice (Romans 13) and promote true religion (Psalm 2, as above). These should be the biggest priorities for any government.

I believe it follows logically that a nation could become entirely selfish, focussed only on its own narrow parochial interests and not interested in the plight of others. You could argue that this is the root of all empires through history — simply wanting to expand its own power and wealth at the expense of other nations.

However, God made the nations for a reason (Acts 17:26). Governments are not there to oversee other countries; each government will be held responsible for its own people. Therefore, I do not believe that a nation-state prioritising the wellbeing of its own citizens is being selfish and introspective. The British government is given by God for the protection and administration of the British people. This is its god-given purpose. If they are not doing that, they are not acting in accordance with the will of God — and therefore not acting justly and righteously.

In summary, God has ordained kings and rulers for the administration of justice and promotion of all that is good. They have a particular responsibility for those within their own boundaries. It is possible to relate rightly or wrongly to other nations, and God will hold nations accountable for that. But it is not selfish or wrong for governments to prioritise doing what’s right for their own citizens first and foremost.

With all this in mind, let’s move on to think about some of the complexities involved in loving others — the kind of things which I suspect that Rory Stewart had in mind.

Love is a complex issue

Love and giving

When it comes to these discussions, they almost always centre around the giving of money (or material things). ‘Love’ is usually spelt ‘m-o-n-e-y’. There are a few things to say about this.

Firstly, giving monetarily is certainly a part of what it means to love others — see 2 Corinthians 8-9. I think you could make the case that this is the case for governments, as it is for individuals. For example, most Western governments have an overseas aid budget — money which is given specifically to help other countries in need. I think this is entirely consistent with Christian values, even if there is more to say.

Secondly, when it comes to a Western nation, it’s important to understand that governments do not have their own money. All government money is taxpayers’ money — it belongs to the people. People pay tax in good faith that the money will be well-used, not squandered or wasted through corruption, and so on. The money raised through taxation should be used by agreement with the ones who gave it. The point is that the government is not autonomous here, but should represent the will of the people.

Thirdly, governments do not have a bottomless pit of money. Theresa May once made a comment about there not being a “magic money tree”. She was right: governments cannot simply conjure up money out of thin air, despite the fact that some seem to believe that they can. Given that resources are finite, they should be allocated with wisdom — and governments, as those who have been given the responsibility of protecting a particular nation-state, should not be embarrassed to prioritise spending the money on those things.

Given all this, how is the UK government doing? Let’s look at a few examples.

Last year our government scrapped winter fuel payments for pensioners, which was done in order to save approximately £1.4bn. At the same time, the British government have sent or pledged £12.8bn of support to Ukraine.

Similarly, the British government has sought to increase inheritance tax for farmers, raising approximately £115m per year. The British goverment is also spending about £8m per day housing asylum seekers in hotels (total, £4.7b in 2023-4).

Those are just two examples — we could go on and on about the amount of money the government spent (/wasted) on its covid response, Net Zero fantasies, and so on. Not to mention the amount being spent on crazy woke projects, which journalist Charlotte Gill has done a good job documenting.

I think it’s appropriate to ask whether the money here is being well-used. Eye-wateringly huge amounts of British taxpayers’ money is being spent to help those in other countries, while British citizens are being told to tighten their belts. It certainly seems to bear out Vance’s comments about the left prioritising anyone except their own citizens!

Love beyond giving

Although giving is a part of love, it’s important to say that love is much more than money. One of the problems with these debates is that they are often framed as a binary choice, when there are more options available.

For example, the choice is not between “giving money to help asylum seekers” or “doing nothing”. What if there were other options available: for example, finding ways of helping their own countries to stabilise and flourish? Perhaps there are ways of supporting people in their own countries. It should be noted that many asylum seekers were created by wars that the Western world have launched, e.g. the ‘War on Terror’ to date has displaced 38 million people.

Love is wanting the best for others, including wanting the best for other nation-states. That means wanting them to flourish in the right ways. This often involves making hard decisions and thinking carefully about how to help them — rather than simply throwing money at the problem.

Some years ago, I read about how mass migration had caused some towns in Poland to be like ‘ghost towns’, as all the young men had disappeared for other European countries. Is encouraging young men to emigrate really the best way of dealing with the problem? Would it not be better to find some way of helping Poland to help its young men find jobs and grow economically?

Love does not enable abuse

A few months ago, I wrote about how love does not enable abuse:

One of examples I mentioned was that of asylum seekers — especially those crossing over on dinghies from France. Love wants to help people who are genuinely in need, BUT love is not blind, and recognises that people can take advantage. In fact, I would say that love entails not allowing oneself to be taken advantage of: genuinely loving others means caring that they do the right thing, and taking advantage of others is wrong.

I think it’s legitimate to ask, for example, how many of the huge influx of ‘asylum seekers’ coming into Western countries over the last few years are genuine. Are they really fleeing from persecution, or have they been attracted by the promise of being given lots of free stuff? I read in the Telegraph earlier today:

Newcomers in hotels have been provided with game consoles and yoga classes paid for by the public purse, with funding also being used to buy refugees and asylum seekers driving lessons, tickets to football matches and instruction in “circus skills”.

Of course we want to help people who genuinely need it — so much as we are able — but we also need to recognise that there are some people in the world who will take advantage, and we mustn’t be naive. In fact, love demands that we not be naive — otherwise we are not really loving them.

Was Vance right?

I appreciate this is a complex topic, and there are many angles I haven’t covered. But I hope that I’ve been able to give a flavour of some of the angles here which other Christian outlets have not covered.

As we draw to a close, I’d like to return to the question of the debate between Vance and Stewart. Who was right? I hope I’ve made clear as we’ve been going through that it’s not quite as simple as declaring one side totally correct and the other side totally incorrect.

I think Vance is correct inasmuch as, it is right for governments to look after their own citizens. This is their God-given duty! There are those on ‘the left’ today who seem to prioritise throwing taxpayers money at just about everyone EXCEPT their own citizens. This is not right.

At the same time, we also need to recognise that this doesn’t imply a narrow parochialism where governments are only interested in what’s happening inside their own country. And I believe that it is right and proper to critique Western governments for the way that they have failed others. For example, their part in wars which led to many people being displaced.

There are a couple of points I’d like to finish with:

Firstly, there is an element of the left which seems to hate the Western world and will do just about anything to prioritise other cultures or countries rather than the West. Douglas Murray wrote about this in The War on the West. I think this is what Vance is alluding to, and he is correct. I fear that some Christian outlets are too busy being politically correct that they don’t ever talk about what is clearly happening. It seems to me such a basic matter of justice, for example pensioners having their winter fuel allowance taken away while billions are spent on ‘asylum seekers’ or given to other countries. Surely, anyone can see that this is wrong.

Secondly, we must direct our criticism at the right targets. I believe that Western governments ARE failing in their duty to love at the moment, but not in the way that Stewart maintains. Love does not mean throwing money at people who say they need it. Rather, fundamentally it means turning to God and seeking his will. Ultimately, that is the chief problem with Western governments, and that is the thing which needs to happen above all to begin solving these problems. This is what I think is missing from Vance’s approach. Western governments will not address the problem by fixing their fiscal policies, but rather by seeking the Lord and his will — obedience to the first greatest commandment.

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