Selfishness Is Not a Virtue; The New York Times, June 5, 2025

 David French, The New York Times; Selfishness Is Not a Virtue

"Too many Christians are transforming Christianity into a vertical faith, one that focuses on your personal relationship with God at the expense of the horizontal relationship you have with your neighbors...

Consider also the evangelical turn against empathy. There are now Christian writers and theologians who are mounting a frontal attack against the very value that allows us to understand our neighbors, that places us in their shoes and asks what we would want and need if we were in their place.

But Christianity is a cross-shaped faith. The vertical relationship creates horizontal obligations. While Christians can certainly differ, for example, on the best way to provide health care to our nation’s most vulnerable citizens, it’s hard to see how we can disagree on the need to care for the poor.

Put another way, when the sick and lame approached Jesus, he did not say, “Depart from me, for thou shalt die anyway.” He healed the sick and fed the hungry and told his followers to do the same.

Or, as the Book of James declares, “If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,’ but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it?”

Again, these passages do not dictate any particular policy, but they do tell us that we must try to meet the physical needs of the poor — here, on this earth — even if our souls are far more durable than our bodies."