3
“The love of our neighbor is the only
door out of the dungeon of self"
– Geo. MacDonald
Issue 3
January 15, 2015
And who is your neighbor and what is love and what kind of dungeon is that? Your neighbor, said Macdonald, is whoever is next to you at the moment. That can be a little inconvenient once in a while, for not all neighbors are neighborly. That one next to you at work, on the bus, in line, at an event, in the dorm or barracks, even next door, might be arrogant, obnoxious, boring, threatening, unsanitary—lots of undesirable things, but those matters are irrelevant. The fact that someone is next to you defines a neighbor and that is the one you should love, like it or not.
And what does that mean? Well, that is the hard part, for the word ‘love’ is used in many different ways, some quite trivial: “I love your hair.” Some strange: “I love watching horror movies.” And so on. Such usages dilute the word, but people will use language the way they want. However, there is a general, common understanding of serious love, the love of parents, children, lovers. Such love means more than ‘like’. It means loving in a deep sense. It means centering your affection on the other, wanting good for the other. It means sacrificial love. The one who loves will do things, perhaps at great cost, for the other. That is the love we are to have for our neighbor, whomever that might be, and we have been told that often, to love them in the deepest sense.
But there is even more than that from very high authority. Jesus went beyond just love your neighbor. He said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Now this does sound weird! We do not normally think it is a good thing to love yourself, to center your affection on yourself, to live in a dungeon of self-centeredness. To say of someone, “He’s in love with himself” is not really a compliment. But in this deep way to love your neighbor as yourself means to wish the best for your neighbor as you wish the best for yourself, to care for your neighbor’s welfare as you do your own, to do for your neighbor what you would do for yourself, to, in fact, love your neighbor as you love yourself.
To live for yourself, to love only yourself to the degree that you do, is to live in a stifling dungeon of vanity, frustration, loneliness, hostility, and disappointment. It is not a good life. The way out, and there is only one way out, is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
There are few, I think, who live entirely in that dungeon, but it does have at least an occasional attraction for just about all of us, and there are many who do indeed like to make a sneaky visit once in a while. The challenge for everyone, therefore, is to breathe as little as possible of those dangerous dungeon vapors and to live as much as possible in the sunlight of neighborly love. As with all virtue, it requires some effort, maybe, for some, a lot of effort.
