know, if we were only more honest with ourselves: that when God says 'Love your neighbour' he means a love which willingly engages in positive acts of care and extravagant gestures of self-sacrifice, irrespective of the race, colour or creed of the one in need. A love which refuses to ask, as this lawyer did, 'Who?' but insists on asking only 'How?' A love which is not interested in the possibility of evasion, only in finding opportunity for expression. A love which is not content to be merely applauded theoretically, but which demands to be demonstrated in practice. 'Go and do likewise,' he says.
I'm sure you don't need me to tell you how this world of ours would be turned upside down by such a love. It would work a social transformation far more radical than any economic revolution, whether from the Left or from the Right. Consider the 'charity at home' philosophy, for instance. Take your newspaper and spend a few moments identifying how many of the intractable conflicts, problems and hurts that disturb our world are caused by people asking, just as the lawyer does, 'Who is my neighbour?' We refuse to love with a universal willingness. We consistently adopt a clannishness that discriminates between 'them' and 'us'. Jew and Arab in Palestine, Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland, Serb and Croat in the former Yugoslavia, resurgent nationalism in the former Soviet Union, endemic tribalism in black Africa, class prejudice and race prejudice here in Britain—the list goes on and on and on. It doesn't matter which comer of the world you live in, you find neighbour-love perverted by chauvinism and sectarianism into something which isn't love at all, but just an enlightened form of self-interest.
Or consider the 'I don't do anybody any harm' attitude. Hasn't it struck you how much appalling neglect of social responsibility in our modern world is justified by that phrase? Back in 1964, a classic example of this was acted out on the streets of New York. A woman in her late
