Jesus said, “Love your neighbor.” I take that literally, though I suppose we need to define “neighbor.” Could neighbor mean everybody, not just the “guy next door”? Could neighbor mean somebody in need? Could neighbor mean those whom we dislike and don’t care much for—those “other people”? Whatever the definition, it is clear for most followers of Jesus that our American definition of neighbor isn’t sufficient, because naturally we would understand that the person two doors down is also to be loved. But what about the person six doors down, or six towns down, or six states away? Or maybe around the world?
In Kindergarten, we all learned a very basic rule: “Keep your hands to yourself, and don’t touch other kids’ stuff without their consent.” In a very basic way, this is what good “citizenship” is: respect others and their property. It’s not quite as proactive as love, but it is a start, and it is a moral and social boundary within which we can love our neighbor.
I’m a libertarian because of the two statements above. Loving my neighbor cannot happen when I vote for others to take his money because I don’t think he’s doing what he ought to with it. There’s nothing just about benevolence with the wealth of others. I’m not loving my neighbor when I pay more in taxes, or support taxes that support my neighbor, when I could be doing it myself, or rallying others to that cause out of my own pocket and energy.
Of course, love goes further than the boundaries that ensure we aren’t aggressing. As the saying goes, peace is not the absence of conflict; so love is not the absence of disrespect or aggression. More on that another time.
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