by Edward Dommen
Who is my neighbour ?
The biblical parable of the good samaritan[1] gives an astonishing, not to say shocking, answer: a neighbour is a person who is in a position to do you a good turn. The parable concerns a person beaten, robbed and left by the roadside. Two people pass by without interacting with the victim. A third however comes to his aid, takes him on his donkey (he has the means to own one) to an inn and, after looking after him, leaves the innkeeper money to continue looking after him. Jesus asks, “who of these three proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among robbers?” And the answer was “the one who showed him mercy”.
The parable says nothing about how the victim responds to his benefactor, nor does it give any reason to think that that latter expects anything in return. In any event, fawning is not an expression of love. “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass: ‘please, please Sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything Sir.” Trump thus imitated a begging foreign leader during a speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee Dinner as reported in the press on 9 April 2025.[2] Private charity can all too easily turn into clientelism which gratifies the donor’s vanity.
The Reformed tradition was quick to discourage such behaviour. Calvin went so far as to say that the recipients of charity need not express gratitude, because in providing for the poor the rich are simply doing their job. In 1535, before Calvin arrived, the newly reformed Geneva, following the example of Lyon, confiscated all the wealth of the Catholic Church.
With it, the Geneva authorities created a “General Hospital” to organise what we would now call a system of social security. Begging was consequently banned.
Calvin looks in the opposite direction from the parable: “I see my neighbour needs me. I must help him”[3] “If we can do anything to preserve the life of our neighbour, we must loyally engage ourselves both in providing what is needed as in avoiding anything contrary; likewise if they are in any danger or perplexity, to help and support them”[4]. This neighbour is one who needs help rather than one who is in a position to provide it.
The parable offers an escape route. Readers naturally tend to identify with the person who has been robbed. The next verse, “go and do likewise” urges them to shift position and identify with the person who comes to his rescue. The victim is clearly his neighbour.
Furthermore, the answer to Jesus’ question “who of these three …?” simply ignores the first two of them. If they do not interact individually they don’t count as neighbours. The parable does not recognise structural or systemic relationships, the fact that one’s actions can willy-nilly affect people of whom we are unaware. The parable thus foreshadows Mrs. Thatcher’s “there is no such thing as society.”
We are all each other’s neighbour. Everyone equally deserves our love.
As?
In the Bible, the invitation to “love your neighbour as yourself” appears three times.[5] The word ‘as’ can be read in two ways. Firstly, it can be read as “Love your neighbour as much as as yourself” or “… in the same way that you love yourself” That is an egocentric individualistic interpretation. It has a particularly dangerous implication: if you have a low opinion of yourself, you are entitled to treat anyone else as worthy of an equally low opinion.
On the other hand, it can be taken to mean “Love your neighbour because he is a part of yourself”. That is the position the poet John Donne takes:
No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.… and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee[6]
The Quaker World Plenary of 2024 took ‘ubuntu’ as its slogan. The Bantu concept of ‘ubuntu’[7], “I am because you are” or “I am because we are” encapsulates that notion. “The origins of umuntu are rooted in a holistic vision for which human existence only makes sense within the totality of all that is”.[8] We are all shaped by each other.
‘I am because you are’ is another phrase which can be read in two ways
1. You are the cause of what I am
2. My cause is to attend to your needs
Firstly, we all share the same ecosphere. Wherever you may be, you help shape the conditions which shape me. In countless ways, you are among the causes of my being what I am.
In the second sense, the phrase becomes a call to action. Our vocation is to respond to our neighbour’s need. Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) sums it up: “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.”
In short, the dictum “Love your neighbour like yourself” would be improved by a comma in the middle: Love your neighbour, like yourself.
[1] Luke 10.30-37
[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-tariffs-leaders-are-kissing-my-ass-to-make-trade-deals/
[3] Calvin, Sermon 53 sur 1Tim 6.17-19
[4] Calvin, Institution 2.8.39 (commenting on the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”)
[5] Lev.19.18, Matthew.22.39, Mark 12.31
[6] John Donne, Meditation 17, 1624
[7] The exact word varies between Bantu languages.
[8] Murove, Munyaradzi Felix (2011)