The Ordo Amoris is Flatter Than You Think

In and interview the other day,  JD Vance bought to attention the concept of the  Ordo Amoris, the idea that within Christianity, as it was traditionally understood, there is a legitimate ranking of our love.  Vance was speaking in the context of U.S. politics, primarily with the idea being that "Charity begins at home" which meant by implication that governments have their primary duty to their own citizens and then to rest of the world. 

Vance got a lot of push back, from the usual suspects but also from a significant number of Christians of all denominations. It's this group that interests me as my interest is in the self destructive nature of modern Christianity. i.e Christian Buddhism.  So I thought it  worthwhile to look at their approach to the subject.

If we divide the parties in this discussion to self, kin and stranger, the objection of the Christian Buddhists is that by prioritising the self, and by extension kin, we are are, in fact being selfish and leaving the the dregs of Christian love to strangers. Christian love, they argue should be based upon need and not proximity to self. Self care is equivalent to selfishness and we all knows what Christianity thinks about selfishness. Implicit in this line of reasoning is that self-care is wrong in a world of competing needs. At the extreme end, you have the modern Christian thinkers, who see the "stranger" as the face of Christ and therefore anyone who who deprioritizes them is deprioritising Christ. Then of course are all the radical Balthasarians, Bathrians with their vague moralising bromides about encounter and radical love, poverty and self-giving.

I begin to tune out.

The big idea that these guys have is that the poor--especially illegal migrants--are a kind of spiritual litmus test which gives you a chance to prove your Christian bona fides. The more you give, and support them the better the Christian you are. And it helps if they're really repulsive. Because we all know how Christ went to the margins and loved the unlovable. Illegal gang members with a history of savage violence and crime are particularly high on totem pole of Buddhist Christian love. Love them by inviting them into your home and with your family and your are a true disciple of Christ. Prudence, common sense and some hesitation are all example of the failure to commit fully to Christ when he presents himself as the "encounter" with the  repulsive migrant. The problem is that how the "encounter" ends in the parable of the Good Samaritan is not how it sometimes ends in real life.

Total commitment to the migrant even at the expense of the self is the name of the game. And not only does this form of Christianity aim at self-denial but it also agitates against policies which discriminate against the migrant and urges people toward government polices which subordinate all other interests to them.

Despite some of the more sensational aspects of illegal immigration such as the gangs and the violence the reality is that most illegal migrants who come to a country are not criminals but people simply seeking a better economic life. They are simply the poor and the question then is, what duty sort of duty of care does a Christian actually have towards them.

Now, I am not a official spokesman for anyone but in my opinion, it really depends on the circumstances. There are no hard and fast rules.

In  Mathew 22:34-40, a clear hierarchy of love is established. First love God, then love your neighbour as you love yourself. Note, the neighbour and yourself is established as an equivalent.  Contrary to many who supported Vance he's not way down the list. One of the things that characterised pre-Christian societies is their strong family based networks. What made Christianity so radical to the ancient world is that its love extended outside the family circle even to the repellent. And there's plenty of passages in scripture where neglect of the poor is punished quite severely by God. "Nearest and dearest" taking "priority" is the wrong way of looking at it.

Now the concept of the "self" is an interesting one since different cultures view the self differently.  In some of the more Nordic countries and the Anglosphere, the self is seen as a quite autonomous with a limited number of obligations to others.  The individual is seen more as an "elementary particle". On the other hand, in much of the rest of the world, the self is not seen as "autonomous" but as someone who intermeshed with the wider community with lots of legitimate obligations toward them. Christianity is pretty big on making sure you fulfil your legitimate obligations. Christianity takes a dim view on such things as children abandoning their parents, on not paying for works undertaken by others and parental neglect.

In other words when you love your neighbor as yourself, your "self" should be understood as a self with obligations. A father, for example, is not a an autonomous self but an individual with real duties and obligations to his wife, kids and other family members. A man can't just ditch these if he doesn't feel like it. They're real obligations which he is committed to, even if someone poor comes along. It helps if we like the ones who we are obligated to but like has got nothing to do with it.  It's all about the love.

In other words,  for the Christian, the poor are another legitimate obligation onto the self.

Now, given that most men have finite resources the issue in the face of all these competing interests becomes one of "resource management" and how to achieve the optimal result i.e. the virtue of prudence. As mentioned before, in pagan days, resource allocation was purely driven by "natural sentiment", so resources were allocated to those whom we felt a natural affinity to, but Christianity is quite explicit in rejecting this view. Christianity demands that we help those in need even if we don't have a natural inclination towards them.  But it doesn't compel us to be stupid or self-destructive.

The Christian Buddhists are right in that a Ordo Amoris which puts the poor on the bottom is the wrong way to look at Christian Charity but where they err is the utter abandonment "prudence" when it comes to resource allocation.  Their altruism becomes pathological when it neglects to recognise all other legitimate and binding competing interests which compete with the "poor", seeing the poor as the only metric by which to judge our actions.  Mix that in with a notion which praises self-sacrifice and you've got a recipe for self-destruction in service of the "poor".

This is what I mean;

You are well aware of the generosity which our Lord Jesus Christ had, that, although he was rich, he became poor for your sake, so that you should become rich through his poverty.

I will give you my considered opinion in the matter; this will be the right course for you as you were the first, a year ago, not only to take any action but also even to conceive the project.

Now, then, complete the action as well, so that the fulfilment may -- so far as your resources permit -- be proportionate to your enthusiasm for the project.

As long as the enthusiasm is there, the basis on which it is acceptable is what someone has, not what someone does not have.

 It is not that you ought to relieve other people's needs and leave yourselves in hardship; but there should be a fair balance- your surplus at present may fill their deficit, and another time their surplus may fill your deficit. So there may be a fair balance; as scripture says: No one who had collected more had too much, no one who collected less had too little.

2 Corinthians 8:9-15

You can quote other bits which come to the same conclusion but the stand out feature of this text is a balance needs to be struck between competing needs. And note there is no obligation for "heroic" self-destruction.