{"id":4752,"date":"2004-01-12T12:24:50","date_gmt":"2004-01-12T19:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=4752"},"modified":"2004-01-12T12:24:50","modified_gmt":"2004-01-12T19:24:50","slug":"wont_you_be_my","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/01\/12\/wont_you_be_my.html","title":{"rendered":"Won’t you be my neighbor?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howard Dean’s been getting more religious out on the campaign road, but his theology on loving your neighbor<\/a> is a bit dubious.<\/p>\n

Later, Dr. Dean flashed his much-talked-about temper at a town-hall-style forum here in a sharp exchange with a 67-year-old retiree, Dale Ungerer. Mr. Ungerer, who said he was a registered Republican but had sometimes voted for Democrats, challenged Dr. Dean to “please tone down the garbage, the mean-mouthing of tearing down your neighbor and being so pompous,” questioning why the candidate spent so much time bashing President Bush.
\nDr. Dean declared, “George Bush is not my neighbor.” As Mr. Ungerer, stood up, Dr. Dean said, “You sit down. You’ve had your say, and now I’m going to have my say.”
\n“I love my neighbor, but I want that neighbor back in Crawford, Tex., where he belongs,” Dr. Dean said. “The president is always my president but the president is not my neighbor if he takes 500,000 kids off their health care benefits.”<\/p>\n

Actually, neighborliness, in the Biblical sense, has nothing to do with the apparent sinfulness, or lousy policies, of the person in question. <\/p>\n

The enmity between Jews and Samaritans over custom and religion was legendary, hence Jesus using the parable of the Good Samaritan <\/a>as the explicit answer of who one’s neighbor is — your neighbor being whom you must love “as yourself” in order to inherit eternal life. The neighbor of the robbed man was not the people on “his side,” not the folks who agreed with him on public policy, but “the one who had mercy on him.”<\/p>\n

In a sense, it’s even worse than that. Being a neighbor becomes an explicit — and required — act of love and mercy, without which one cannot have eternal life. By rejecting someone as your neighbor, you, yourself, are not being a neighbor, and are so held accountable.<\/p>\n

As Blinne notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The expert in the Law (a.k.a. a Pharisee) sought to justify himself by defining people away as his neighbor. Jesus replied with the Parable of the Good Samaritan which focused not on who your neighbor was but rather what was the characteristics of a good neighbor (showing mercy).<\/p>\n

The Bible, and Jesus, certainly allows for righteous anger against sin and wrong-doing. If Dean feels that Bush has committed a wrong when he (as Dean put it) “takes 500,000 kids off their health care benefits,” it’s certainly acceptable to be angry about that, and work to stop it. But that doesn’t mean that Bush is not <\/i>Dean’s neighbor, in the Biblical sense. And if Dean is going to couch answers in religious terms, he might want to get his theology straight when he does so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Howard Dean’s been getting more religious out on the campaign road, but his theology on loving your neighbor is a bit dubious. 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