It's 4:45 p.m. on a Friday and I'm coming at ya with a brief primer on what should be basic theology.
What JD Vance is referring to is "ordo amoris," or "Ordered Love" in Latin. The TL;DR version is that you have closer affections and duty to certain people, starting with God and working outward toward all of humanity.
Rightly orienting ourselves is essential to understanding how to do the will of our Father in heaven, and as finite creatures, we are not able to dedicate the same amount of time, energy, and resources to everyone in our lives.
But for some reason, this triggered Liberal Christian Twitter (I use that label very loosely).
Because it's almost 5 o'clock, let me give you the Cliff Notes version of why this is dumb:
The Parable of the Good Samaritan is not saying you should love people from different religious/ethnic/national groups more than your own family. It is saying that the amount of love you have for your enemies should exceed what the world would consider normal for even a close relative (how much more should you sacrifice for your own family, then?). The same goes for Jesus' command to love your enemy in Matthew 5:43-48. Jesus is calling us to love exponentially more, not to reorder our hierarchy of loves/duties. This makes it all the more astounding when Jesus says that we should love God so much that it seems like we hate our own families in comparison (Luke 14:26). This kind of passionate, obedient love is impossible for us humans to achieve without the help of God Himself.
The two greatest commandments, to love God (Deuteronomy 6:5) and love our neighbor (Leviticus 19:18), are in themselves a hierarchy. During Covid, politicians like Kamala Harris spouted "love thy neighbor" as an excuse to vax up and shut up. But to do so would mean capitulating to lies, and you cannot love God by living by lies. If in "loving" your neighbor, you dishonor and disobey God, then you have utterly failed in every possible way. It is not possible to love others by disobeying God (1 John 4:7-21, 1 Corinthians 13). Another example would be lying to kids about sexuality and gender. This can never be compassion.
Jesus condemned those who sought to abuse this order by giving alms to the temple that should have been used to care for their parents (Matthew 15:5, Mark 7:11-13).
The Apostle Paul says a man who does not provide for his own family has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Timothy 5:8). He does not say anything approaching this when reminding Christians of their duty to provide for the persecuted church in Jerusalem (1 Corinthians 16:1-4, 2 Corinthians 8:1-9:15, Romans 15:14-32), let alone the wider world.
God asserts in Deuteronomy 6 that parents have a special obligation to talk about His commands with their children regularly and routinely. While Israel was supposed to be a light for all the world, their responsibilities started at home.
Paul spent a large portion of his letters to the first-ever churches explaining the duties of husbands, wives, parents, and children (Ephesians 5 and 6, or 1 Corinthians 7 as examples) - and in order for a man to serve the church as an elder or deacon, he must have his house in order first (1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:6-9).
This ordering of affections and relationships can be seen in the second chapter of Genesis, when God says that a man will leave his father and mother to be united with his wife, and the two "will become one flesh." A husband or wife is to be placed higher in priority than a mother or father. Out of this flows a natural progression of all other relationships.
Because it is now AFTER 5 o'clock and I have to make dinner for my family, I won't belabor the point.
What I will do is leave you with these quotes from CS Lewis, because that seems to be the fastest way to get people to stop spouting off nonsense.
"Ordo amoris" is not just a theory of Aquinas or Augustine; it's not merely a Catholic doctrine (I am not Catholic).
It is woven into the fabric of the Christian faith.
'St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in ordinate affections or "just sentiments" will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.' - C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
'To love you as I should, I must worship God as Creator. When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.' - Letters of C.S. Lewis
This isn't hard, guys. 🤷♂️
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