Don’t Just “Tolerate”. Love.
The Judeo-Christian Tradition Commands Us To Love Our Neighbor. It evolved throughout the Bible. It's past time for it to evolve in America.
Author’s note: This was originally drafted in April/May 2021; I sent it for review to a respected friend and theologian, Michael J. Iafrate. I don’t know if he read it before his passing, I know it is a weaker article because his feedback is missing, and I only hope that this article would meet his approval.
“The White liberal must see that the Negro needs not only love, but justice. It is not enough to say, “We love Negroes, we have many Negro friends.” They must demand justice for Negroes. Love that does not satisfy justice is no love at all. It is merely a sentimental affection, little more than what one would love for a pet. Love at its best is justice concretized. Love is unconditional. It is not conditional upon one’s staying in his place or watering down his demands in order to be considered respectable.
[…]The white liberal must rid himself of the notion that there can be a tensionless transition from the old order of injustice to the new order of justice.”
It seems only appropriate to lead off this article with this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. in his book Where Do We Go from Here – Chaos or Community?
Many Christians seem to believe that the absence of hate, or mere “tolerance” is a high Biblical virtue.
In this thinking, we may be well intentioned, but we would wrong.
Tolerance falls woefully short of both the Old Testament and the New Testament commandments to “love thy neighbor.”
In the Old Testament, the important passage is Leviticus 19:18: “You shall not take vengeance, nor hold any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD.”
In the New Testament, first to Matthew 7:12: “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
Then, again, in Matthew 22:39: “The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’”
Not one of these passages commands the reader to “tolerate” your neighbor.
Not one of these passages leaves it simply at “don’t hate” your neighbor.
The law in Leviticus isn’t “don’t hate your neighbor.”
Jesus didn’t tell followers to “tolerate your neighbor even if you disagree.”
The message in the Sermon on the Mount is to “treat people the same way you want them to treat you.”
It’s not “treat people the way you want to be treated, unless…”
Jesus didn’t tell his followers to “treat people the way you have been treated,” or “treat people the way you think they should be treated based on other things you’ve heard people say that I’ve said.”
And what Jesus commanded his followers to do, echoing Mosaic Law in Leviticus, is to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
I should probably leave it at that, but to really get to these passages, and how Jesus echoed and then expanded on the Mosaic Law, one must dig deeper to understand the message. [i]
So here goes a deeper dive that will lead us back to the same conclusion.
What Is “Love”? (Baby, don’t hurt me)
English has only one word for many, many different types of love.
We use the word “love” to describe the feeling that we feel toward romantic partners most often, but also to describe how we feel toward pets, toward our family members, toward objects that we possess, and even toward pleasing flavors and other sensations.
We love many things in many ways in English, and the word never changes.
In other languages, such as Hebrew and Greek, this is not the case. Other languages have different words that each represent different relationships, feelings, and states of being, and in English we funnel them all into the word “love.”
This may seem nitpicky. But this is absolutely fundamental understanding for reading Biblical texts – the English translations always lose some nuance when it comes to the word “love”.
“Love” Is Active in Leviticus
Taking the verses in order of Biblical appearance, let’s begin with Leviticus 19:18.
For the analysis of Leviticus 19:18, I’m going to lean on an analysis from Prof. John J. Collins, who is the Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale University.
Beyond digging into the linguistics, the context of the verse makes it clear that this is not about an emotional love, rather its about a love that exists in a state of justice.
The context is a verse which is defining what “Just” behavior is supposed to be in the Israelite/Judahite society.
As Prof. Collins explains, with contextual translation:
Lev 19:13 You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning…. 19:15 You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. 19:16 You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am YHWH.
Love, then, is not an emotion here, but refers to treating one’s neighbor justly—the manner you might treat someone whom you do love.”
To me, it rings of the love that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of when he preached:
“Love that does not satisfy justice is no love at all. It is merely a sentimental affection, little more than what one would love for a pet. Love at its best is justice concretized. Love is unconditional. It is not conditional upon one’s staying in his place or watering down his demands in order to be considered respectable.”
Neighbors Within Borders
Digging into the original Hebrew teaches us that the passage of Leviticus 19:18 isn’t referring to a metaphorical neighbor. It’s not the invitational Mr. Rogers, “will you be my neighbor?” where everyone is welcome.
No, the best way to interpret this passage within its context is as a narrow reading of your neighbor as, basically, your literal neighbor.
Prof. Collins clarifies: “Most contemporary scholars agree that the “neighbor” (רע) in Leviticus 19 refers to fellow-members of the Israelite or Judahite community.[2] Although the word itself does not necessarily refer to Israelites, the context here is determinative:
Lev 19:17 You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall reprove your kinsman, and not incur guilt because of him. 19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor like yourself; I am YHWH.”
In Prof. Collins’ summary: “in the context of “your brother,” “your kinsman,” and “your people,” “Neighbor, like the previous three, refers to a fellow Israelite.”
It’s more tribal than we may initially understand in English, and to interpret this to this modern day audience might be “you, West Virginians, treat other West Virginians with reciprocity and some sense of equality and equity, as you would treat yourself or your close family.”
Leviticus 19:33 goes on to explain that even “aliens” who choose to reside for long term among the Israelites should be treated “as yourself.”
It’s a little bit like folks who say they don’t hate all immigrants; they just don’t like immigrants who don’t naturalize. (To extend the previous interpretation, it may be something like “If someone lives in WV and pays all of the WV taxes, you should treat them as a West Virginian even if they don’t have a 304 area code.”)
But even in this narrow reading of who is our neighbor, the commandment is love. Not tolerate.
When we read into Matthew, we see that the commandment is even more inclusive than what we see in Leviticus.
Blessed Are You, Among Sinners
Turning to the New Testament and to Matthew 7:12, we find the last of the three chapters that make up the “Sermon on the Mount”.
“In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
By my reading of the Greek (I am referring to the commonly available BibleHub.com), the meaning of this commandment, whether in English or in Greek, is about the same: something like,
Author Interpretation
[Biblical English translation]
Based on what I’ve previously told you, this is the way to behave[therefore].
Whatever you end up doing at any given time
[In everything],
treat other people the way you wanna be treated
[treat people the same way you want them to treat you],
because this is the rule I’m telling you is from God
[for this is the Law],
and it’s the rule we’ve been told before, by God, through the Prophets
[and the Prophets].
And as we learn from Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers,
“The sequence of thought requires … some explanation. God gives His good things in answer to our wishes, if only what we wish for is really for our good. It is man's highest blessedness to be like God, to "be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect," and therefore in this respect too he must strive to resemble Him.”
The context is important, because the key point of the Sermon on the Mount is the part where he gets beyond who will inherit the Kingdom, and to the point of how we can bring about the Kingdom.
Jesus doesn’t tell listeners or readers that the Lord loves us upon condition. He doesn’t tell us that God tolerates us, or that God doesn’t hate us. And throughout the Sermon he rebukes the idea that Earthly positions are indicative of Heavenly positions or fates, and in fact the Sermon turns them on their head:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 “Blessed are the [c]gentle, for they will inherit the earth.
6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
10 “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
If you aren’t familiar with the Sermon, I encourage readers to check it out. It culminates:
“In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
The Sermon is not just some rambling about who are blessed or who will get which blessings upon certificate of death; it is a litany of the blessings that are shared among all persons, and in this tradition the reader or listener is supposed to understand that we are the same in God’s eyes, as God’s creations, regardless of our Earthly positions.
Matthew 7:12 is not just a bunch of statements like some sort of promissory or will, but a call to action.
It is a call for us to treat other people the same way that the reader or listener hopes that God treats us: with God’s everlasting and undying love.
A Kingdom Without Borders: Love Thy Neighbor, Jesus Redux
The third instance of the command to “love thy neighbor” appears in Matthew 22:39.
Again, the verse taken on its own seems clear enough, but the context is important.
Jesus, we are told, is facing is a line of questioning by the Pharisees, where they’re basically just trying to trip Jesus up because Jesus’ teachings were disrupting the status quo, and the ideas threatened to diminish their priestly power within the culture.
34 But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, [t]a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him: 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the great and [u]foremost commandment. 39 The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 Upon these two commandments [v]hang the whole Law and the Prophets.”
This is a very simple and clear re-statement of what Jesus had said during the Sermon on the Mount, but speaking to the Pharisees it is important that Jesus recite the law from Leviticus.
And so Jesus recites the law, but with a little twist.
If we go to the Greek that it was originally written in, we see that the concept of “love” here (Ἀγαπήσεις (Agapēseis)) is similar to the “love” commanded in Leviticus. The form “agape” references a pure love, an indelibly just love, a state of love that exists without conditions, much like Dr. Collins described in Leviticus 19:18 and Dr. King described in his sermon.
The word here chosen for “neighbor” is to be taken more broadly than the neighbor we are commanded to love in Leviticus. The Greek word πλησίον (plēsion) best translates as something like “the nearby person,” which is to say anyone who is nearby, whether Gentile or Jew, whether poor or rich, whether leper or good-healthed, whether related by blood or only through our shared humanity.
And there is the truly radical message of the New Testament.
The Old Testament and the laws of the Old Testament were really only directed toward the tribes and kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
In the New Testament, we get a much more inclusive commandment, and Jesus takes these laws and says, basically, “Look, these are the commandments. Most importantly, Love God. And, just in the same way as you love God, extend the same love to anyone who is nearby you. If these laws aren’t followed, the other ones don’t really matter.”
It’s a lot of analysis to get down to one simple fact. No matter where you look, or how you interpret or translate these passages, the commandment is to love.
It’s not that “tolerance” or the mere absence of hate are bad things.
It’s just that they aren’t Biblical virtues in the way people seem to think they are.
Christians are called, unconditionally, to love our fellow human beings.
And as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote:
Love that does not satisfy justice is no love at all. It is merely a sentimental affection, little more than what one would love for a pet. Love at its best is justice concretized. Love is unconditional. It is not conditional upon one’s staying in his place or watering down his demands in order to be considered respectable.
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[i] Why Go To The Originals?
I was raised in the Catholic tradition, and so all three of the translations above are from the New American Standard Bible. Unfortunately, if we work from the English translations alone, we are allowing our understanding to be perverted by several layers of interpretation.
For example, in the case of the King James Version, it was written in its original languages, mainly Hebrew and Greek, and then translated into the Latin “Vulgate,” and then again translated into the King James’ English Version we know today.
It’s also important to remember that these were oral traditions, passed on by word of mouth, for centuries in the case of Leviticus and tens of decades to centuries in the case of the New Testament.
If we accept that the original books were written through divine inspiration, I believe it is a profane short shrift to the original messages if we only work in our chosen English translation.
To get a clear understanding of what’s really going on in these verses, its necessary to go back to the original translations and to wrestle with the language as it was written.
That being said, I do not read well in either ancient Greek or Ancient Hebrew, and so I will rely on sources that are commonly accessible to all of us, and we will walk through the nuances that are lost if we assume that any chosen English translation is adequate.