neighbor

• who is my neighbor?

103:5.2This idea-ideal of do­ing good to oth­ers—the im­pulse to deny the ego some­thing for the ben­e­fit of one’s neigh­bor—is very cir­cum­scribed at first. Prim­i­tive man re­gards as neigh­bor only those very close to him, those who treat him neigh­borly; as re­li­gious civ­i­liza­tion ad­vances, one’s neigh­bor ex­pands in con­cept to em­brace the clan, the tribe, the na­tion. And then Je­sus en­larged the neigh­bor scope to em­brace the whole of hu­man­ity, even that we should love our en­e­mies. And there is some­thing in­side of ev­ery nor­mal hu­man be­ing that tells him this teach­ing is moral—right. Even those who prac­tice this ideal least, ad­mit that it is right in the­ory.

• love as self

131:2.11“Love your neigh­bor as your­self; bear a grudge against no man. What­so­ever you hate do to no man. Love your brother, for the Lord has said: ‘I will love my chil­dren freely.’ The path of the just is as a shin­ing light which shines more and more un­til the per­fect day. They who are wise shall shine as the bright­ness of the fir­ma­ment and they who turn many to righ­teous­ness as the stars for­ever and ever. Let the wicked for­sake his evil way and the un­righ­teous man his re­bel­lious thoughts. Says the Lord: ‘Let them re­turn to me, and I will have mercy on them; I will abun­dantly par­don.’

• love as self

131:2.13“And to all who love the Lord su­premely and their neigh­bors like them­selves, the God of heaven says: ‘I will ran­som you from the grave; I will re­deem you from death. I will be mer­ci­ful to your chil­dren, as well as just. Have I not said of my crea­tures on earth, you are the sons of the liv­ing God? And have I not loved you with an ev­er­last­ing love? Have I not called you to be­come like me and to dwell for­ever with me in Par­a­dise?’”

• who is my neighbor?

140:8.113. So­cial at­ti­tude. The Jew­ish rab­bis had long de­bated the ques­tion: Who is my neigh­bor? Je­sus came pre­sent­ing the idea of ac­tive and spon­ta­neous kind­ness, a love of one’s fel­low men so gen­uine that it ex­panded the neigh­bor­hood to in­clude the whole world, thereby mak­ing all men one’s neigh­bors. But with all this, Je­sus was in­ter­ested only in the in­di­vid­ual, not the mass. Je­sus was not a so­ci­ol­o­gist, but he did la­bor to break down all forms of self­ish iso­la­tion. He taught pure sym­pa­thy, com­pas­sion. Mi­chael of Neb­a­don is a mercy-dom­i­nated Son; com­pas­sion is his very na­ture.

• love as self

159:5.4“You should love your neigh­bor as your­self.

• love as self

159:5.9Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to ap­pro­pri­ate the bet­ter half of a Scrip­ture while he re­pu­di­ated the lesser por­tion. His great ex­hor­ta­tion, “Love your neigh­bor as your­self,” he took from the Scrip­ture which reads: “You shall not take vengeance against the chil­dren of your peo­ple, but you shall love your neigh­bor as your­self.” Je­sus ap­pro­pri­ated the pos­i­tive por­tion of this Scrip­ture while re­ject­ing the neg­a­tive part. He even op­posed neg­a­tive or purely pas­sive non­re­sis­tance. Said he: “When an en­emy smites you on one cheek, do not stand there dumb and pas­sive but in pos­i­tive at­ti­tude turn the other; that is, do the best thing pos­si­ble ac­tively to lead your brother in er­ror away from the evil paths into the bet­ter ways of righ­teous liv­ing.” Je­sus re­quired his fol­low­ers to re­act pos­i­tively and ag­gres­sively to ev­ery life sit­u­a­tion. The turn­ing of the other cheek, or what­ever act that may typ­ify, de­mands ini­tia­tive, ne­ces­si­tates vig­or­ous, ac­tive, and coura­geous ex­pres­sion of the be­liever’s per­son­al­ity.

• who is my neighbor?

164:1.2But the lawyer was not wholly sin­cere in ask­ing this ques­tion, and de­sir­ing to jus­tify him­self while also hop­ing to em­bar­rass Je­sus, he ven­tured to ask still an­other ques­tion. Draw­ing a lit­tle closer to the Mas­ter, he said, “But, Teacher, I should like you to tell me just who is my neigh­bor?” The lawyer asked this ques­tion hop­ing to en­trap Je­sus into mak­ing some state­ment that would con­tra­vene the Jew­ish law which de­fined one’s neigh­bor as “the chil­dren of one’s peo­ple.” The Jews looked upon all oth­ers as “gen­tile dogs.” This lawyer was some­what fa­mil­iar with Je­sus’ teach­ings and there­fore well knew that the Mas­ter thought dif­fer­ently; thus he hoped to lead him into say­ing some­thing which could be con­strued as an at­tack upon the sa­cred law.

• love as self

170:3.63. To thus love your neigh­bor as your­self is the high­est ethics.

• love as self

180:1.1Af­ter a few mo­ments of in­for­mal con­ver­sa­tion, Je­sus stood up and said: “When I en­acted for you a para­ble in­di­cat­ing how you should be will­ing to serve one an­other, I said that I de­sired to give you a new com­mand­ment; and I would do this now as I am about to leave you. You well know the com­mand­ment which di­rects that you love one an­other; that you love your neigh­bor even as your­self. But I am not wholly sat­is­fied with even that sin­cere de­vo­tion on the part of my chil­dren. I would have you per­form still greater acts of love in the king­dom of the be­liev­ing broth­er­hood. And so I give you this new com­mand­ment: That you love one an­other even as I have loved you. And by this will all men know that you are my dis­ci­ples if you thus love one an­other.