On Ordo Amoris and JD Vance's Hierarchy of Obligations
The Vice President, in a recent interview, decided to dish out some religious wisdom to help us all feel better about his administration’s take on immigration. A snippet:
There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.
In a later tweet he clarified that he was talking about the Augustinian notion of ordo amoris, which defines a hierarchy of obligations that I assume resembles the one he described. I’ll leave it to brighter or more interested minds to decide if he got it right (or discuss the audacity of our morally bankrupt leaders to try and teach us about Jesus in a Fox interview).
The concept of prioritizing love for some people over others has always rubbed me the wrong way, and I don’t think I’m less of a good Christian for feeling that way1, though Mr. Vice President may disagree. Evidently, Jesus didn’t think it was a very important Christian concept because He never taught it. The closest thing He gave us was the two Great Commandments:
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Matthew 22:37-39 (Emphasis added)
Even with the numerical designation of God first and neighbor second, Jesus goes out of His way to say that the second commandment is like unto the first, and offers no advice on how to allocate our love among different competing groups of neighbors2.
And that’s why it bugs me when people pull out these arbitrary lists of who we’re supposed to love more. Is God more important or is my family more important? Well, I bet God wants you to be good to your family. Acting like the first one is going to jeopardize the second one doesn’t really resonate with me.
Or the even weirder one, Do I love my kids more or do I love my spouse more? More than once I’ve been pulled into that conversation and I just don’t get it. My friend’s dad sat her and her siblings down as kids and told them, “I will never love you as much as I love your mother.” What an insane thing to say!3 To me, framing love as something to get more or less of than somebody else almost feels antithetical to the nature of love itself.
It seems like loving God and loving others is one and the same, and the best thing you can do for your family and fellow citizens is to hold yourself to a high standard and be the best person you can be.
Now, in a society you obviously have your priorities and allegiances, which I assume is what Vance is trying to get at. I think it is common sense that I prioritize the well-being of my wife and child—the people that I specifically have responsibility for. Neglecting them in the pursuit of helping someone else would be a failure on my part.
I guess my issue with pointing that out is that it just feels like a big lame excuse to be a worse person. I can absolutely have love and goodwill for people outside the borders of my country while also taking care of my family. Why place these things at odds with each other, as if by caring about immigrants I will be forced to start hitting my wife and being a jerk to my kids?4
I don’t want to fall into the trap of using the Bible as an excuse to be hostile to other people. It might make for good politics but it’s not going to make me a better or happier person. I do believe it’s possible to have strongly held sincere views on policy without being angry about it.
Anyway, if anyone reads this and disagrees with me I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. I know you’ll be kind and thoughtful as people on the Internet always are.
I may be a bad Christian for other reasons, but not because of this.
If you want to argue that our neighbor in this case means fellow citizens or people close to us, argue with a wall. Anyone who’s been to Sunday School knows the answer to “Who is my neighbor?”
They are divorced now, by the way
I think we should enforce our nation’s laws and secure the border, but I don’t think we should celebrate the deportation of people who are likely in great distress. And I think we should take responsibility for our own problems instead of blaming the Mexicans or whoever else.