Jesus does not answer with a definition or a more precise qualification, still less a law

The common denominator of love of God and love of neighbor therefore is the abandonment of selfishness and the will to self-sacrifice.  Only when I no longer live for myself can I be quite open for God and unreservedly open to my fellow man whom God accepts just as he accepts me.  Loving my fellow man does not complete my task of loving god.  I remain directly responsible to God and none of my fellow men can take this responsibility away from me.  God however encounters me, not exclusively, but - since I am myself human - primarily in my fellow man and expects myself-surrender at that point.   He does not call me out of the clouds, nor merely indirectly in conscience, but above all through my neighbor, a call which is never silenced, but reaches me afresh each day in the midst of my ordinary secular routine. 

The demand, flowing from the badly written non-establishment language of the United States Constitution, leads to the frequent, entirely irrational, entirely unjustified AND ENTIRELY UNENFORCEABLE  demand by the irreligious, even by some of the more naive members of minority religions that voters keep their religion out of the public sphere, out of politics.  That is one of the dumbest things that ever became a rallying cry on the American left in the 1960s and beyond, not only alienating the religious but failing to admit the actual nature of the rare occasions when the American left had produced real results.  I find it unsurprising that in that case, as in other self-defeating poses taken by the secular American left and too much of its duped religious side, that the language of the "civil liberties" industry was largely the source of it. 

The non-establishment language, like the "free speech" demand is even in its strictest legal sense A REQUIREMENT ON THE GOVERNMENT, NOT THE PEOPLE.   In the heady days of the new atheism of the 00s that was often the demand, that the religious, Christians, easily 98 times out of a hundred, keep their religion to themselves and out of the public sphere.  Such restriction was looked to by those wanting to obliterate religion as a means of getting rid of religion, I know that because so many of them expressed such a naive and childlike faith.

Of course the first response was that if the Civil Rights movement had done that its most successful campaigns would probably never have happened.   The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s was conducted largely through the Black Churches just as the abolition and subsequent campaigns for equality were heavily and intimately tied in to the Christianity of the major figures of those campaigns.  

Some, like the silver-tongued opportunist - ex Trotsyite, ex-Brit, ex-lefty, Bush II supporting apostate Christopher Hitchens lied about that, thrilling so many an atheist lefty who could't keep up with him joining the neo-cons.  Hitchens was one of the major figures in my conclusion that those who do not believe in sin have no problem with acting as if it is not a sin to tell a lie or bear false witness against others.   I don't think his facility to morph from a Trotskyite into a neo-con as treacherous as any of them was unrelated to his rejection of God, he was hardly the only one who trod that well worn path from Marxist gangsterism to capitalist fascist gangsterism.   I'd say that once they've obtained a sufficient level of wealth, that transformation is the general rule in that allegedly humanistic, idealistic ideological sham.  It is certainly as clear that that is the case as it is that when religious institutions become kingdoms of this world they tend to abandon the Gospel, the Law, the Prophets.  

I think it is also clear that without this sense of a moral obligation to love your neighbor - in the radically extended meaning of that term that Jesus gives when asked that question, in the parable of the Good Samaritan - egalitarian democracy is not only doomed, it is a non-starter.  And as even the best of stated intentions among human beings require the overcoming of selfishness and the starting of the will to self-sacrifice - I doubt with to the level of absolute certainty that that will ever be effective at the percentage of the human population that that has to be there for egalitarian democracy to exist without the conviction that no one less than God requires that  of us for our own good.   You might be able to get by with 40% of the population being selfish and beyond stingy when it comes to even sacrificing from their surplus - though not ever securely with the anti-democratically structured Electoral College - anti-Democratically constituted Senate -  but you'll certainly never, ever see it come to pass as a society or national system if fifty-percent plus one don't feel that as a binding obligation for them to even have a decent life here, in the world in which politics and the atrocities that can result from it - as well as the good which can - egalitarian democracy will never happen. 

I think one thing is obvious from those few major successes of the American left, without the power of Christians taking the teachings of Jesus, of his radical interpretation of  the Law of Moses very seriously,  the American left ALWAYS FAILS IN THE END.   

And as an aside, keep that in mind when you read the word "abolished" in the next passage, as when Jesus abolished the death penalty for the adulteress as I've talked about here recently.  

But who is my neighbor?  Jesus does not answer with a definition or a more precise qualification, still less a law, but - as so often - with a story, an exemplary narrative.  According to this, my neighbor is not merely someone who is close to me from the very beginning; a member of my family, my circle of friends, my class, my party, my people.  My neighbor can also be a stranger, a complee starnger, anyone who turns up t this particular juncture.  It is impossible to work out in advance who my neighbor will be.  This is the meaning of the story of the man fallen among thieves;  my neighbor is anyone who needs me here and now.  At the beginning of the parable the question is asked:  "Who is my neighbor?"  The important thing in the parable is not the definition of "neighbor",  but the urgency of the love required just from me, in the concrete case, in the concrete need, quite aside from the conventional rules of morality.  Nor are the needs lacking.  Matthew in the discourse on judgement repeats four times six of the works of love which are relevant then as they are now.  This does not mean that there is to be a new legal system.*  As in the case of the Samaritan, what is expected is an active creative approach, fertile imagination and the decisive action in each individual case in the light of the particular situation .  

What God really wants then becomes clear in love. What is involved in the commandments also becomes clear.  In any case, it is not only as in Islam, a question of an obedient "submission" (= Islam) to the will of God revealed in a law.  In the light of love the commandments acquire a uniform meaning, but they are also restricted and occasionally even abolished.  Anyone who understands the commandments legalistically and not in the light of love is constantly faced with a conflict of duties.   But love puts an end to casuistry;  man no longer observes precept or prohibition more or less mechanically, but adapts himself to what reality itself demands and makes possible.  Thus every precept or prohibition has its intrinsic criterion of love of neighbor.  The bold Augustinian saying, "Love and do what you will." has its basis here.  That is how far love of neighbor goes. 

*  I will point out here that Hans Kung doesn't mean that there is to be no new secular legal system as understood, police, lawyers, judges, prisons, he means as in The Law as set out in scriptures.   The present American legal system is certainly nothing in line with Matthew 25:31-46, in most ways it is the exact opposite.  How many of us visits the prisoner or cares about their welfare?  The "white evangelicals" clearly are in favor of even more barbarous treatment of them even as they pretend they believe that their behavior will get them driven out of the Kingdom.   If they really believed the book their Herod held upside down for his photo-shoot, they wouldn't vote for him.