If you are asking who is my neighbor, you are asking the wrong question.

In the Good Samaritan parable, Jesus never directly answers the question, who is my neighbor. Instead, he turns it around by asking “who was neighbor to the beaten man.” We should not be worried about who is our neighbor, but who we can be neighbor to.

The emphasis that Jesus places is not about knowing one’s neighbor, but about being a neighbor and providing as a neighbor. The question isn’t “Who are they?” but “Who are we?”

Jesus extended the concept of "neighbor" to the outsider, the enemy, and the persecutor. Beyond just physical proximity. A neighbor is anyone who has a need that we can help meet. Anyone with whom we can share God’s love. Not only those who are similar to us or with whom we are comfortable, but all whom God places in our journey. In reality, who isn’t our neighbor?

The concept that we love our family and then we love our neighbor, and then we love our community, and then we love our fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world is not the Christian way. Jesus invited us into a different world altogether. A world where love moves freely, without hierarchy or a series of concentric circles. Where borders have been removed.

We belong to each other with full acceptance as the rule. We need each other. We depend on each other. We affect each other. The early church survived in part because it was a loving community. Christianity was a response to the chaos, fear, and misery of life in the urban Greco-Roman world. The church provided a new kind of social relationship making life more tolerable. To the homeless and impoverished, it offered charity as well as hope; for newcomers and strangers, it offered an immediate basis for attachment; to those affected by epidemics, fire, and earthquakes, it offered comfort and care; for orphans and widows, it provided a sense of family and safety.

I Am Third represents the basis for every faithful life: “God is first, others are second, and I am third.” Others are our neighbors. The defining elements of our lives is the two-fold commandment of love, God and neighbor. By placing ourselves third, we have things in the right order and are living a life that will bring the greatest good to others, and unexpectedly, to ourselves. The intended connection between God, others, and us is not a zero-sum relationship. It is a dynamic in which God wins, others win, and we win.

St. Thomas Aquinas first suggested that love is a choice to will the good of the other. Willing the good of the other captures the selflessness that should always be understood when we speak of love. Living love is an action to will the good of our neighbor. To love neighbor as self means seeing the outcome of their good as fundamental to our sharing in the good.

My last concept on this subject is enlightened self-interest, a philosophy in ethics which states that people who act to further the interests of others ultimately serve their own self-interest. The Bible constantly encourages us to look with enlightened self-interest. Enlightened self-interest is a bottom-up concept - "We the people” are the ones striving for a more perfect union. The well-being of society is a result of the choices and actions of mankind being a neighbor.

If we find ourselves asking, "Who is my neighbor?", we already missed the point. We should be inspired to cross the road for our neighbor. We were created by divine compassion and also for divine compassion. We need to live each day with love for each of our neighbors. Love the best we can today, then get up tomorrow and do it again. We’ve been blessed—now we must not begrudge that same blessing to others.

Let’s answer His call and be a neighbor to those in need, let’s leave a legacy and make a difference in His Kingdom.

Rejoice and Godspeed.

Who Is My Neighbor?