The Complexity of Loving One’s Neighbor with No Exceptions

Last week I planted a new yard sign near the sidewalk in front of our house. Here is an image that accurately portrays it. What do you think? Is this a good, positive message for my neighbors to read and ponder as they walk up or down the sidewalk?

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Where the Slogan Works

As a challenge to the scope of “neighbor”—refusing to exclude people by ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexuality, or politics—the slogan does real theological work. It echoes the lawyer’s question to Jesus in the Good Samaritan parable (“who is my neighbor?”) and doesn’t allow him to constrict his understanding of who a neighbor is.

In the current cultural moment when Christian nationalism narrows “neighbor” to those who embrace the same ethnic background, national identity, or even the same religion, a sign refusing that narrowing says something real and important, even from a sidewalk.

It is quite clear, surely, that the sign is talking about “neighbors” both near and far. Many of those who see my yard sign are literal neighbors who walk by, many of them going for a longer walk in Canterbury Park, which is just a three- or four-minute walk from where they see my yard sign.

And while there is not a lot of diversity in my neighborhood, it is likely that they will meet someone who is represented on one and maybe more of the strips of the yard sign. Thoughtful people will also comprehend that the sign encourages branching out to respect differences of people far from our local neighborhood. At least, that is my hope.

Where It Gets Harder

The slogan is challenged, though, not by the question of who counts as a neighbor, but far more by the question of what love requires when you consider multiple neighbors. For example, how do you love neighbor A if he/she is mistreating/harming neighbor B? Doesn’t that call into question the last line of the yard flag?

To make it more concrete—and please note I am not talking at all about my next-door neighbors—what should be done if my neighbor is apparently sexually abusing the teenage girl who is his next-door neighbor on the other side?

What does “love your neighbor, no exceptions” signify in cases like that? Doesn’t love of the vulnerable neighbor require action, even though such action would have serious negative effects on the other neighbor?

Love of the one doing harm doesn't mean protecting him from consequences. Silence to preserve the relationship, or treating exposure as unloving, gets this backwards. Real love for the offender includes wanting him stopped—for the victim's sake, of course, but also because continuing the abuse damages his own moral and spiritual condition.

The two loves are not actually in competition. Protecting the vulnerable neighbor is the loving act toward both parties—it is not a trade-off between loving A and loving B, but a recognition that stopping harm serves everyone's good, including the person doing it.

What a Yard Sign Can and Can't Carry

A yard sign is a public signal, not a treatise—its job is narrower than a full theology of love. It can answer the lawyer’s question (who is my neighbor?) but is not built to answer the harder question of what love does amid conflict and harm.

That’s not a defect unique to this sign; most bumper-sticker theology doesn't survive its hardest edge case, and that's not the standard it needs to meet. Silence on a question is different from a wrong answer to it.

Here is the real test for a sign like this: does the simplification it makes point roughly true, or does it point false? On the question it actually answers, this one points true.

One seam worth noting

"Vote like you" sits in a different category from the rest of the list. Looking, praying, speaking, and loving differently are matters of identity. Voting is a chosen act with public consequences. It is closer to a person who acts/does differently than merely one who is different.

The list quietly slides from identity categories into an action category, which is exactly the seam where the abuse scenario also lives. The flag’s implicit answer, “you still love them,” seeking what is best for them, holds for those who vote unwisely as well as for those who, like Neighbor A (mentioned above), abuses his neighbor.

But, again, loving is not condoning. So, sure, we should still love the neighbor who voted for the current POTUS as well as those who are still among his devoted MAGA supporters. But the latter need to be made aware of the harm that Mr. Trump has done to this nation and the world. And our love for them must be "tough love."

[My A.I. “buddy” Claude provided limited assistance researching and drafting this post.]