Donkeys, Elephants, and Loving Your Neighbor

This week, former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan said he’s leaving the Republican Party because, in his words, their policies made it a daily struggle to love his neighbor.

That’s a sentence that made my eyebrows take the express elevator to my rapidly rising hairline. Not because it was partisan, but because it was old-fashioned. Like truth. Like conviction. Like someone remembering the recipe card for banana pudding without reaching for Pinterest.

“Love your neighbor” isn’t a bumper sticker we invented between Chick-fil-A and the church softball league. It’s ancient. Leviticus 19:18 says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Then Jesus up and promotes it to the varsity level— pairs it with loving God and calls the combo the Greatest Commandment. The syllabus includes a lab: the Good Samaritan, where the hero is the guy from the wrong team who stops and helps the half-dead stranger on the roadside while the respectable folks keep walking to make their committee meetings on time.

That’s the origin. Which is why Duncan’s line landed. He chose a core belief over a club membership. That doesn’t make him a saint, but it does make him a person of deep honor and conviction, whether you agree with him or not.

Meanwhile, the rest of us live in a hall of mirrors where convictions bend depending on whose name is on the letterhead. I’ve watched a decade of moral Pilates that would make the residents of a brothel wince—contortions performed not to reach virtue, but to reach the finish line of a rat race.

You’ve seen this game before, too, especially when it comes to helping out our neighbors on the global stage. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Republicans said they believed we shouldn’t police or aid the world when Clinton was in office. Their tune changed when the placard on the door changed from Clinton to Bush. Democrats believed in helping abroad— until 11:59 a.m. January 20th when their guy left office. After that in their eyes, any form of foreign aid went from “helping other countries” to “conquest,” and magically, the very same facts pack their bags and relocate to the opposite conclusion.

If you’ve been paying attention, your neck hurts from the whiplash.

I’ve lost count of the people I thought had deep convictions—some of them pastors, some of them pillars, some of them the unappointed mayors of the Facebook HOA—who turned themselves into balloon animals to stay faithful to a party line. It leaves you wondering if anyone truly believes in anything, or if we all just like the smell of power, the sight of money, and the sound of our own echo.

During the pandemic, watched a reporter as a woman screamed, “I’d rather watch my grandparents die than wear a mask.” You what now? That’s not a conviction; that’s a slogan that got lost, missed its Uber, and decided to hitchhike to Crazytown. If your “principle” requires someone else to be collateral damage, it might not be a principle. It might be marketing.

Geoff Duncan’s bold move goes deeper than “Are you a Republican or a Democrat?” It’s deeper. Who are you? What do you actually believe? If your answer starts with a party platform and ends with a talk-radio catchphrase, that’s not belief. That’s branding. Political parties are not prisons; they’re vehicles. You can exit. You can walk. You can take a bike. You are not welded to the bumper.

Here’s where the Duncan thing helps. Call it the Duncan Test:

• Does this belief let me love my neighbor?
• Or does it reward me for looking out for myself and calling it “freedom,” “security,” or “owning the libs/cons” with a side of smug?

If you say you follow Jesus—and around here a lot of us do—you don’t get an asterisk. You have to love your neighbor. Not just the neighbors who look like you, vote like you, or tailgate for the same SEC team. The command didn’t come with a ZIP code filter. If you don’t love your neighbor, you don’t follow Christ. It really is that simple. It is not easy. But it is simple.

Megachurch pastor Andy Stanley once summarized decision-making this way. Ask “What does love require of me?” Then do that. That one question will clear out your political sinuses faster than eucalyptus steam. Try it on everything:

• Immigration? What does love require of me?
• Healthcare? What does love require of me?
• Poverty? What does love require of me?
• Guns? What does love require of me?
• Schools, taxes, foreign policy, the argumentative cousin at Thanksgiving? What does love require of me?

We live in the Bible Belt, where the theology is often louder than the love, where talk shows pass for catechism, and where we sometimes confuse volume with virtue. The cornerstone of the faith most of us claim is not outrage; it’s love. Love is not weakness. Empathy is not sin. Mercy doesn’t erase justice; it completes it. If your favorite pundit makes you feel brave for being cruel, that’s not courage. That’s caffeine for your resentment.

Geoff Duncan decided he couldn’t keep cosigning a political agenda that had no room for love. You can disagree with his politics and still recognize the spine it takes to put your deeply held beliefs before your bumper sticker.

Frankly, it’s refreshing to watch someone choose an ancient command over a modern campaign.

So here’s my modest proposal for this week: audit your convictions. Print them out if you have to. Hold them up to the light like a counterfeit bill and ask, “Does this help me bind up wounds on the roadside, or does it help me cross to the other side and keep my hands clean?” If the answer is “It helps me win,” congratulations on your honesty. Now try again.

We don’t have to agree on everything. We don’t even have to agree on most things. But if your convictions make you incapable of loving the neighbor you’ve been commanded to love, you need to keep the name of Jesus off of your lips. Go play golf on Sunday mornings and give up the act.

But if you really do believe what you claim to believe, pick the love that outlives the news cycle. Pick the road where you stop for strangers. Pick the kind of decisions that look a lot like sacrifice. And if your party won’t ride along?

Well, neighbor, you know how to walk.