Wednesday, March 16, 2022

But how?

For Christian engagement with the world, then, patriotically and otherwise, the key word is judiciousness, and the methods are ad hoc. The engagement is often messy, constantly concerned with particulars, and always ongoing. It is open to the neighbor (and even the enemy), whom Christ calls us to love. Accordingly, the church’s neighbor love “does not enter through abstract declarations of "loving everyone" but starts by singling out the neighbor that appears alien to me, the neighbor whom I love in the midst of her obvious differences. It is with this neighbor that a more general love can start. This kind of neighbor love is intrusive and subversive to neoliberal ways of relating and being, as an individual must encounter her neighbor on the neighbor’s own terms. To love this way is an affront to the exchange logic and value within neoliberalism because this kind of neighbor love makes no demand to reciprocate.— Naming Neoliberalism: Exposing the Spirit of Our Age, 137 (emphasis original)

No comments: