James Talarico and the Great Commandment

When my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor

James Talarico, who is running for a senate seat in Texas, recently said, “Jesus didn’t tell us to love our churches, our doctrines, or our scriptures. He told us to love our neighbors—regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or immigration status. When my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor.” What Mr. Talarico is referencing here is a conversation Jesus had with a teacher of the law who asked him “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Before Jesus mentioned our neighbor he replied, “The most important one…is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mk 12:28-31)  

Similar to Mr. Talarico’s claims, Governor Andy Beshear claimed Christian faith and then referenced “loving my neighbor as myself” as part of his reasoning for “vetoing the nastiest piece of anti-LGBTQ legislation that ever came through my state.” Governor Beshear was referencing Kentucky’s SB 150 which had made it illegal to give sex-rejecting medical treatments like puberty blockers and double mastectomy to gender confused minors. 

Recently, at a local school board meeting in Escondido, CA, where an elected male school board trustee had recently come out as a “trans woman,” many people in the community came to speak in support of and opposition to the claim. One speaker in support of the trustee’s trans identification referenced a similar account of Christ’s commands read from Matthew 22:37-40, “And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” According to the speaker who read this passage, community members who claimed Christian faith were obliged to accept the trans-identified trustee’s claimed gender identity because this was “loving one’s neighbor.” 

Clearly, this is an argument being used more and more to convince Christians that loving one’s neighbor means affirming one’s neighbor in many things that Christians legitimately view as sinful. How are Christians to respond to such claims? In this instance, as with so many others, the ideas of Oneism and Twoism help us with a clear and Biblical answer. 

In Romans 1:25 the Apostle Paul makes a simple but absolutely foundational statement about humankind and the way we view the world. He says of fallen men who are rebelling against God, “They have exchanged the truth about God for the lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen.” Note that Paul only allows for one truth: worship of the Creator, and for one lie: worship of created things. These are the only two options that any human being has for their worship, and what they worship changes how they view and do everything else. One way that we can use this verse is by breaking every action and idea into categories that my boss, Dr. Peter Jones, coined to describe in practical terms what the Apostle Paul was describing. These categories are called Oneism and Twoism. 

What Mr. Talarico, Governor Bashear, and the speaker at Escondido’s school board meeting were calling love of neighbor is a Oneist form of love. For all three, love means accepting the claims of gender confused men and women, boys and girls about “who they really are on the inside” as a fact of reality. If a man who was married and raised children suddenly declares that he is a trans female, Christians are called on to allow that man to identify himself and accept his claims that he is, in fact, a woman. If a female teenager suddenly declares that she is a boy trapped in a girl’s body, then the loving thing to do is to believe her self-identification and give her puberty blockers to keep her from “going through the wrong puberty.” However, this idea of Oneist love completely ignores the context of Twoism that Jesus clearly described in his summary of the two great commandments. First we love God, and this determines how we love our neighbor. 

Christ was describing love within a clearly Twoist context because his commands called us first to use our entire being, mind and soul and heart and strength, in loving God who is the Creator of all things. In fact, as Dr. Robert Gagnon helpfully points out in a critique of James Talarico’s statements, “The second greatest commandment, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ in Leviticus 19:18 includes in the context (19:17) a command to reprove your neighbor for wrongdoing lest you incur guilt for failing to warn him. That’s part of what love means (or as Paul states in praise of love in 1 Corinthians 13, “love does not rejoice in wrongdoing”).

Twoist love takes into account the truth described in Scripture that it is God, and God alone, who defines who is male or female. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27) A man who claims to be female may deeply feel the desire to be a woman, but he is not the Creator and is therefore not the one who determines his sex. God does. And God does this with creative beauty and love. Therefore, in honoring God and loving neighbor, we also honor who God has determined our neighbor to be.