Solidarity & Love of Neighbor

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.