(Ir)religiosity

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Solidarity & love of neighbor

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I ran across this quote yesterday:

“As a virtue solidarity becomes a way of life.  It becomes the new way of living out ‘the love your neighbor as yourself’ that up to now has been interpreted as giving out of largesse. Given the network of oppressive structures in our world today that so control and dominate the vast majority of human beings, the only way we can continue to claim the centrality of love of neighbor for Christians is to redefine what it means and what it demands for us.  Solidarity, then, becomes the new way of understanding and living out this commandment of the gospel.”

–Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz in Mujerista Theology

Interesting.  I’ve often been troubled by the common practice of giving — like the rich religious leaders in the gospel — and showing solidarity out of one’s abundance and excess.  I just wonder what that means when there is no cost, no sacrifice, and no real personal change.  Naturally, my next thought is to ask whether the giving and the solidarity are really authentic or simply cheap gimmicks to appease a guilty conscience either individual or collective.

The irony here of course is that I am often feel that I am doing exactly that; and I then have to ask myself: do I really care for the well-being of the Other?  Am I genuinely invested in acknowledging the mark of the divine that rests in my neighbor?  That’s tough.

Written by Blake Huggins

September 4th, 2008 at 6:00 am

Posted in Uncategorized

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  • Great discussion. I've back-linked this (http://aftermyownheart.blogspot.com/2008/09/to-...) with some comments about corporate responsibility.
  • jonathan - spot on about consumerism . i couldn't agree more. good luck with that post!

    i also agree with the basic thrust of your thought. affirming our common humanity and recognizing the image of God that lies within the other is necessarily first-order. everything starts there.

    but i also wonder were justice plays a part. i see love and justice working in tandem here; better yet, i see justice, more or less, as the concrete working out of love itself.

    so for instance, i first begin by affirming the humanity of the homeless person on the street -- which is essential as most persons, based on my observations, dehumanize homeless persons by not even acknowledging their presence as a human being -- but from there it seems that there as to be some concrete 'working it out' as it were. put more bluntly, what tangible good does it do to affirm that persons humanity while still leaving him hungry?

    i don't frame the question in that manner at all to downplay the initial basic human affirmation, it just seems that justice must necessarily follow love if it is indeed truly love of neighbor.
  • Consumerism as a cultural phenomenon seems to teach and encourage largesse. But I think people are strangled by it. The more we buy the more we have to manage and take care. What once was something to serve us becomes something to serve on a regular basis. (I think I just found my next post).

    I think loving your neighbor begins with relationship and being love to that person. It doesn't have to be about what we give. The most powerful thing we can often do is simply validate the person as human and worth our time. The gift is their dignity as opposed to something that takes care of an immediate need.
  • jonathan - i think you're definitely onto something and i would be interested to hear more of your thoughts.

    i didn't notice this initially. perhaps the largesse part is simply -- or not simply, it is a point of concern after all -- a symptom of the larger problem. that being: what exactly does it mean to love one's neighbor. and even more important i think is the question: have we framed that wrongly in the past and even now?

    i think everyone would agree we've gotten it wrong. we all like to talk about that part. but i don't see many people speaking to the redefinition of what it means to love one's neighbor, especially in our increasingly globalized contexts.

    what do you think?
  • Blake, I wonder if the problem right now isn't largesse but a real understanding of the what love your neighbor means, as Ada suggested. I think redefining it would go a long way towards solving the problem. Yet I know it won't go away.
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