“Neighbor love,” “loving one’s neighbor,” and “love for one’s neighbor” are everywhere in Christian discourse about social ethics. How could they not be? The principle comes from our Lord Jesus Christ in such places as Matthew 19:19 and 22:37–39, Mark 12:30–31, and Luke 6:31. 

Last year, I wrote a long-form essay explaining the moral logic of loving one’s neighbor and what such a principle entails. The general thrust of my argument then was that loving one’s neighbor is a principle that calls us to will the good of others. In our interactions with others and in society, we are to cultivate flourishing and not privation. It might as well be the equivalent of Aquinas’s first principle of practical reason applied to social ethics. We should seek to do no harm to others. It is both a scriptural principle and a natural law principle. 

But crucially, it is just that—a principle. On its face, it is not a policy prescription. If you survey its use in contemporary Christian ethics, however, it is used to justify virtually whatever policy preference one wants justified. If not carefully weighed and considered, it easily becomes a wax nose that can be shaped in whatever way one wants to get the outcomes one prefers.