Love Your Neighbor Is a Call to Action

Every year Friends World Committee for Consultation writes a letter to yearly meetings. Normally this is an ordinary—if nevertheless important—part of our work. Sometimes it is included in documents in advance or read at the start of annual sessions, but not much more than that.

This year though was different. The letter shared the theme of World Quaker Day 2025: “Love Your Neighbor” and the supporting Bible passage, Galatians 5:14: “For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

In response, it was viewed thousands of times, prompting many messages back to us. Even though it is a simple summary of Christian teaching, the command “Love your neighbor” has become something urgent, as the principalities and powers seem so out of step with it.

Yet this isn’t new. All of the crises the world currently faces are a result of people, over time, not loving their neighbors as themselves: climate breakdown, war, isolation, inequality, abuse, disinformation, discrimination. I’m sure you can add to the list.

Some of the people today who are stirring hostility against people of other countries or faiths claim to be doing so in the name of “Judeo-Christian Values.” Let’s be clear: shared Jewish–Christian values (shared with other faiths too) are of empathy with the stranger, not hatred of them.

The Talmud tells a story of a rabbi, Hillel the Elder, who was challenged to recite the whole Torah while the listener stood on one foot. Rabbi Hillel replied, “What is hateful to yourself, do not do to another. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go study it.” Sometime later, Jesus said something very similar: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus says the words “love your neighbor as yourself” four times in the gospels. He is echoed in the letters twice by Paul and again by James, all of whom are in turn quoting Moses. That makes eight times the words “love your neighbor as yourself” are said in the Bible, even before we start counting the times much the same is said in different ways.

“And who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asked Jesus. In response Jesus told the story of a man with a different religion from a neighboring country who helped an injured traveler, even after two of his countrymen had walked by. Jesus finished with a question: who was the neighbor? In this story the neighbor was the foreigner.

Church Father Augustine of Hippo theorized that if any Bible passage would seem to contradict love of neighbor, one should “meditate upon what we read till an interpretation be found that tends to establish the reign of love.” I dearly wish that some who use proof texts to seek to justify injustice would adopt Augustine’s advice.

A space to sit still with Scripture is something Quakers can offer. This is a truth that won’t be found in social media soundbites. It’s a balm for the bruised and an antidote to antipathy. I’m glad for all the ways Friends manage to be doers of the Word, seeking to find ways to “do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed,” as written in Isaiah.

I’m not drawn to a legalistic view of Scripture. Being Christian is more than saying, I do this because the Bible says that. The Word is something sown in our hearts. This is what I understand as the new life in Christ. It can imbue our very being, and then by extension our actions.

The word Christian is an adjective as well as a noun. If the world’s Christians acted in a Christian way, the world would be a much better place. Jesus said we will know his true followers by their fruit—that is, by what they do. Bearing good fruit means loving our neighbors. All our neighbors. No exceptions.