As I understand it (and I may be wrong, and I'm as confused as you & most
people are about how to actually carry it out)...
the Gospel couches this phrase (love your neighbor as yourself) in a scene
where Jesus is being asked, What is the greatest commandment? & he says,
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind & strength, and
your neighbor as yourself. On these 2 commandments hang all the Law and
the prophets."
Set this way, the 2 commandments are intertwined, and the 2nd follows
from the 1st. The 1st is based on the Genesis perspective that the
universe is a creation from nothing which God found all "very good".
Humans, as creatures, as children of God, are in the presence of this
creative, originary love; and as children, they naturally return that
love. Thus Jesus' other commandment, "You must turn and become as
little children, or you cannot enter the Kingdom of God."
Jesus does not "command" us to give ourselves over blindly to
the "neighbor". The "command" is directed at ourselves alone,
and its substance is that if we want to enter the kingdom, we
have to give to others the same love of God that nourishes &
is reflected in our own self-love. This is the ethical ground
of justice & equality.
& underlying this, I think, is Jesus' idea that "the kingdom grows
of itself": which I connect with Levinas' concept of human relationship -
that we begin by loving the others who are the principle of our own
being, growth & development - we are by definition loving beings,
this is our natural state, which Redemption is meant to recall to us.
Henry
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