Ms. Rachel and the Unloved Neighbor

Ms. Rachel Demonstrates Why Good Exegesis Is So Important

I feel entirely justified in having a couple more thoughts about Ms. Rachel because so very many people are talking about her. But also because she decided to bring Jesus into it.

Here is Ms. Rachel explaining what it means to be a good person:

@msrachelforlittles💗💗💗

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I have so many thoughts about this that I took the trouble of transcribing what she said. For truly, I care very much about what is happening to the definition of the English word “love.”

Let’s get to it:

I've shared prayers on here before and said God bless, and that's because my faith is really important to me, and it's also one reason why I love every neighbor. In Matthew 22, a religious teacher asked Jesus what's the most important commandment.

I’m not sure what kind of faith Ms. Rachel has, but, like so many, it appears at once to be a privately rather than communally expressed spirituality and yet, ironically, completely governed by the zeitgeist. She prays because her faith is “important” and she also shapes her life according to her private beliefs—they just happen to align with something that is very chic right now. That is, loving everybody in the world. She loves “every neighbor.”

That, of course, is just silly. You can’t love every child in the world and you can’t love “every” neighbor. Or rather, you can if you mangle the definition of love. You can have a lot of nice feelings for people you have never met, but you cannot do good things to someone a world away whose existence is unknown to you. You have to do good things for your literal neighbor in order to obey the command of Jesus in this regard.

What kind of good things? In the first place, you have to tell your neighbor the truth about the nature of reality. You can’t lie and say, for example, that there is no God, nor that he doesn’t care what you do he just wants you to be happy. You can’t corrupt good things. You can’t take advantage of your neighbor. You can’t exchange nice feelings for the sacrificial work of caring for the bodily and spiritual needs of the people who come into your way. Paging Mrs. Jellyby—if you love children you have never met, the likelihood is that you are not loving your actual children.