Beyond "Ordo Amoris"

 

When trying to understand the apparently empathy-challenged Trump presidency, I am reminded of Dr. Seuss's famous description of the Grinch in his 1957 children's book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

The Grinch, of course, was a fictional character. but there is nothing fictional about the Trump presidency, nor about its increasingly pernicious effects on American society and its increasingly corrosive effects on American religion. 

Consider, for example, the recent argument about Vice President J.D. Vance about order amoris ("rightly ordered love"), which began as a twitter debate between Vance and British Tory politician/podcaster/public Christian intellectual Rory Stewart.

The 2024 election was, for all the talk about the price of eggs, also very much a culture-war election, and this seemingly arcane religious debate actually goes to the heart of that cultural conflict, which has to do with our capacity to care for one another - or, to use Dr. Seuss's imagery, the size of our hearts.

The ordo amoris argument arose when Vance claimed that Christians have a hierarchy of moral obligations, with their special moral relationships with their family and their communities exercising a certain priority. In response, Rory Stewart highlighted John 15:12, where Jesus says that the greatest love entails laying down one’s life for others. He also emphasized Jesus' apparent ambivalence about family connections and suggested that the Christian tradition has been detrimentally over-influenced in this area by classical pagan philosophy.

Of course, there is a sense in which what both are saying is partly true.

In the natural order, which includes the family and the political community (about which classical pagan philosophy has had a lot to say), we have obvious natural obligations to those with whom we are specially connected. The Kingdom of God does not extricate us from those natural relationships, and in some cases actually affirms the obligations they entail. Examples include the fourth commandment, "Honor thy father and they mother" (Exodus 20:12), "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities" (Roman 13:1), "So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, and especially to those who are of the household of faith" (Galatians 6:10). 

It is likewise obvious that, while scripture and tradition reaffirm our natural obligations and connections, they clearly command us - not as citizens, but as disciples - to strive to go beyond them. Hence, Saint Paul: "I still live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). Discipleship does not abolish family and civic ties, but it does definitely relativize them. Jesus famously did this when he asked, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” (Matthew 12:48). And, of course, there is the expansive judgment scene in Matthew: "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:40).

This is an old argument, which goes back to the debate between Jesus and the lawyer that led to the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Pointedly, Jesus did not actually answer the lawyer's question, "Who is my neighbor?," a question which reflects the natural order of things by seeking to set limits and boundaries to our obligations to one another. Instead Jesus answered in the order of grace by exemplifying instead what it means to behave as a neighbor towards others, illustrating how such localized limits are transcended.

Again, Vance is correct in suggesting that, as family members and citizens, we do have special moral obligations to fellow family members and fellow citizens. It is with these obligations that civil society and its laws are primarily concerned. Thus, as Vice President, Vance has specifically sworn an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

But Stewart is also - and maybe more importantly - correct in that, as disciples, we must never remain satisfied with those limited natural obligations and must constantly expand the borders of our moral community to include others outside those limits as well. This is primarily a religious rather than a civil obligation, but inasmuch as the natural order is inherently ordered to grace, those who recognize that they live in the order of grace must act accordingly. Examples of religiously motivated efforts to act within the political order to care beyond the boundaries of family and civil community can take many forms, including government-funded programs, e.g., George W. Bush's (now possibly endangered) PEPFAR, which has provided funding for HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention, and research and has been the largest global health program focused on a single disease in history prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As limited human beings, with limited resources, our ability to keep expanding the borders of the moral community of those we care about will also always be limited, quite apart from the consequences of sin which will always further limit our actual desire and willingness to do so. Like the Grinch, our natural hearts may always be two sizes too small, even in many instances at the level of family and nation, let alone as disciples of Jesus and citizens of his kingdom. The lifelong challenge of discipleship and allegiance to Christ's kingdom is to allow our hearts constantly to be expanded by God's grace - even as the Grinch's heart tripled in size thanks to his experience of Christmas.