Members of the medical profession and anyone who watches medical documentaries and dramas on television will be familiar with the concept of triage, the process of deciding who should receive priority in terms of medical treatment based on the severity of their condition and their chances of survival.
The reason for the existence of triage is that human beings are finite creatures. If human beings were possessed of infinite time, capacity for action, and resources, triage would not be necessary because all patients could be given the same amount of time and the same degree of care. In reality, however, the finite time, capacity for action and resources that human beings have at their disposal mean that medical staff have to make sometimes very difficult choices about who they will treat and in what order.
The particular issue of triage illustrates the more general truth that human beings cannot do everything at once. For example, it is not possible for someone to write a sermon, attend a football match, and visit their aged mother in a care home at one and the same time. This means that they will have to make a choice about which of these activities they will engage in.
The fact that (unlike God) human beings cannot do everything at once also means that they cannot show love to everyone at the same time. In the example just given, all three activities can be viewed as ways of showing love. The person concerned could show love for their congregation by writing a sermon that will build them up in their Christian faith, they could show love for a football team by cheering them on during their match and they could show love for their mother by visiting them in her care home. The problem is that they cannot show love in these three different ways simultaneously. They have to choose which form of love they are going to prioritise at any given time.
I was reminded of this basic truth as a result of the recent public disagreement between the new American Vice-President JD Vance and the British politician Rory Stewart. In an interview with the American network Fox News, Vance declared:
‘”[A]s an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. It doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders … But there’s this old-school — and I think a very Christian – concept by the way, that you love your family, and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
Stewart responded to these comments by writing on X: “A bizarre take on John 15:12-13 – less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love.”
The Bible reference is, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
Vance then replied on X: “Just google ‘ordo amoris.’ Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?”
It seems to me that even though they disagree with each other, both Vance and Stwart are making important points.
To take Stewart first, his correct concern is, I think, that we should not shrink the limits of Christian love. What he is worried about is the implication that one should love members of one’s own family, or community, or country at the expense of outsiders. In Christian terms this is a legitimate worry because God loves everyone (‘The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made’ Psalm 145:9) and therefore everyone is also potentially someone we are called to love as well. Any teaching that suggested that we should love this set of people rather than that set of people would therefore be wrong. As Jesus made clear in his parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37, any individual can be the person whom God calls us to love at any given point in time.
However, I don’t think that Vance is actually denying this. I think the point that he is making is that God normally calls us to love those with whom we have the greatest connection. The human finitude which I referred to at the start of this article means that we cannot effectively love everyone in the whole world at the same time in the same way that God does. We have only a limited number of people that we are able to love and knowing this, God gives us a particular set of people to love.
This is the point of Vance’s reference to the ordo amoris (in English ‘the order of love’), an idea which is first found in the work of the early Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo. In Chapters 27-28 of his work On Christian Doctrine Augustine writes as follows:
“Now he is a man of just and holy life who forms an unprejudiced estimate of things, and keeps his affections also under strict control, so that he neither loves what he ought not to love, nor fails to love what he ought to love, nor loves that more which ought to be loved less, nor loves that equally which ought to be loved either less or more, nor loves that less or more which ought to be loved equally. No sinner is to be loved as a sinner; and every man is to be loved as a man for God’s sake; but God is to be loved for His own sake. And if God is to be loved more than any man, each man ought to love God more than himself. Likewise we ought to love another man better than our own body, because all things are to be loved in reference to God, and another man can have fellowship with us in the enjoyment of God, whereas our body cannot; for the body only lives through the soul, and it is by the soul that we enjoy God.
“Further, all men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you. For, suppose that you had a great deal of some commodity, and felt bound to give it away to somebody who had none, and that it could not be given to more than one person; if two persons presented themselves, neither of whom had either from need or relationship a greater claim upon you than the other, you could do nothing fairer than choose by lot to which you would give what could not be given to both. Just so among men: since you cannot consult for the good of them all, you must take the matter as decided for you by a sort of lot, according as each man happens for the time being to be more closely connected with you.”
What we learn from Augustine is that there is a hierarchy of love. We are called to love God first of all, then our neighbours and then, and only then, are we to pay attention to our own needs and desires (‘our own body’). Furthermore, because for the reasons previously outlined we ‘cannot do good to all’, we are called to show particular love to those with whom we have a ‘closer connection’ as a result of ‘the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance.’
To put the same thing another way, God in his providence has placed us in particular contexts as members of our families, as members of specific communities, our neighbourhoods, our schools, our churches, our places of work and so forth, and as those who belong to, or live in, particular countries, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and so on. His primary call to love is a call to love those whom we encounter and have responsibilities towards in these particular contexts.
It is easy to hold in theoretical terms that we should love all human beings across the entire planet. It is easy to do this because the general nature of this idea means that it is not a call to do anything in particular. What is much less easy, but which God nevertheless asks of us, is to take concrete steps to show self-giving love to the specific sets of people among whom God has placed us.
Now, these sets of people may well change over time. We may become members of a new family through adoption or marriage. We may move to a new neighbourhood, move to a new school, start attending a new church, or move our place of employment. We may even become the inhabitants or citizens of a new country. However, even if these changes do happen, the basic principle will remain in place that we are first called by God to concretely love those to whom God has given us a ‘closer connection.’
This does not mean that we should restrict our love so that we do not, if circumstances arise, show love to people on the other side of the world whom we have never met by, for example, responding to appeals for help after a natural disaster. What it does mean, which is the point that Vance and Augustine are making, is that our first priority will normally need to be to care for those who are our immediate neighbours.
The final point to note, however, is that even the call to care for our immediate neighbours is not necessarily straightforward. To go back to the example given earlier in this article, writing a sermon, cheering on one’s local football team, and visiting one’s aged mother in her care home can all be seen as forms of such neighbour love. The problem is that they cannot all be done at the same time. How then do we choose which of them to prioritise? How do we do the ethical triage?
There is no hard and fast answer to this question, but in general terms we have to ask questions such as whether the activity concerned is time critical or can be undertaken at a different time, and the seriousness of the consequences if we fail to undertake the activity. How much harm will it do if we miss the match to write the sermon or visit our mother as opposed to the harm that will follow if we go to the match rather than writing the sermon or visiting our mother?
The good news is that God, in his unlimited knowledge, understands exactly the sorts of difficult choices about how to show love that we face every day. If we ask him in prayer he will give us the wisdom to choose rightly and if through inattention or obstinacy we fail to follow his guidance he will, when we repent, forgive us our mistakes and give us the opportunity to do better next time. The only unforgivable thing is to fail to want to love at all.
