Letter #188: AdVanced Theology
But what do the experts online have to say?
Dad,
Our Vice Patriarch J.D. Vance recently touched off a firestorm by saying that “there’s this old-school—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way, that you love your family. And then you love your neighbor...and then you love your fellow citizens...and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
Instantly, liberals of all creeds and none joined in a beautiful interfaith union of people who hate J.D. Vance. They insisted with absolute certainty that there’s nothing remotely Christian about Vance's point of view, because didn’t Jesus say something about compassion or something somewhere? Probably! Checkmate.
Of course, Vance was only alluding to the commonsense fact that, much as we ought to love all God’s children, we aren’t ourselves gods. We’re limited in time, space, and energy. One consequence of this is the need to be selective about where you invest your efforts and attention, and one good suggestion is to start with the people and things immediately in front of you.
Catholics know this kind of reasoning as ordo amoris, the order of loves. But really it’s a basic fact that “even the gentiles” could grasp without divine inspiration. It’s consistent not just with Christianity but also with Confucianism, Stoicism, and common sense.
That’s why Chesterton teased high-society intellectuals for oozing with theoretical love for “humanity” while despising the actual humans they lived nearest to:
This compromise has long been known,
This scheme of partial pardons,
In ethical societies
And small suburban gardens—
The villas and the chapels where
I learned with little labour
The way to love my fellow-man
And hate my next-door neighbour.
So when you write, “I can't get up to heaven unless I'm down-to-earth,” I think, of course that’s true. I can sit up all night with a cigar and a couple fellow dorks to speculate about sweeping Theories of Everything—in fact, I count it among life’s great pleasures. But practically speaking, no one’s about to ask my opinion on whether great men create history or history creates great men. I’m tasked with loving my neighbor, not saving “the world.” That’s God’s department. Mine is to do justly, love mercy, and all that good stuff.
And yet. The reason Christians had to re-affirm the truths of the ordo amoris, which previously had been obvious to everyone, is that they were living under a wildly new dispensation which really did require them to hold basic natural realities up against mind-bending cosmic truths. “Whoever does my father’s will in heaven is my brother, my sister, my mother.” “Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat; or your body, what you will wear.”
Here’s water—now walk on it: We may be living in Aristotle’s world, but apparently we’re supposed to look at it through Plato’s eyes. “For no other study turns the gaze of the soul upward than the study of what is invisible.”
Love,
Spencer
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And the common sense corollary is that if everyone were to take responsibility and care for themselves, and their family, and then the neighbors, and then participate in the civic and charitable affairs of their community—the whole country would be in great shape and thus able to turn attention and resources to helping other parts of the world.
“Catholics know this kind of reasoning as ordo amoris, the order of loves.”—Spencer
And, of course, JD converted to Catholicism. So, it’s to be expected he’d say it. Except to progressives, who seem to expect everyone to be only in lock-step with them.