People who claim follow the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (i.e. Jews and Christians) believe that they have an inherent, exceptional, God-given ability to love their neighbors. Their self-righteousness deceives them into believing that they automatically and instinctively obey all of God’s commandments — including the one about loving your neighbor — without exception because they believe in God and are created in his image.  Christians also believe that, because they love and follow Jesus, they automatically love their neighbors. These beliefs blind Jews and Christians to the truth about the harm they do to themselves and others.

Jews and Christians also believe that atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, freethinkers, secular humanists, rationalists and followers of other religions (collectively categorized as “unbelievers” and “gentiles”) do not have the ability to obey God’s command to love their neighbors as themselves. They are wrong about these matters just like they are wrong about so many things.

Unbelievers are not deceived about these things. Intuitively they understand that lack of belief in God, and religious piety are not prerequisites for loving your neighbor.

It is a curious fact that people who are not religious and skeptical that God exists do a much better job of obeying God’s commands about loving and caring for one another. Why non-religious people have a greater disposition toward loving their neighbor than religious people is a mystery but possible explanations could include  the following:

• They have not been trained as children to to show partiality and preference toward others who are not like them.
• They have a natural predisposition to care for others. ‎

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While these are reasonable explanations for why non-religious people might be especially inclined to care for others. we have an explanation in Romans 2:11-15.

For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.

Here is the right way to interpret this scripture:

God’s standard for righteousness depends on obedience to his law regarding loving your neighbor as yourself — not on self-righteous religious behaviors. Anyone — including those who are not Jews and Christians — who loves their neighbors instinctively (i.e. not in obedience to religious laws) and works to correct injustices their neighbors have suffered shows evidence that the requirement of God’s law to love your neighbor is written on their hearts.

Jews and Christians are profoundly hypocritical in many ways but especially on the matter of loving their neighbors. Hypocrisy is not a problem for unbelievers who seem to have an acute ability to know injustice when they see it and a strong internal drive to correct injustice by caring for the needs of their neighbors. They are not concerned about righteousness. They are only concerned about the well-being of their neighbors.

It is counterintuitive for Christians, atheists and agnostics to consider that lack of religious training, aversion to religious practices, and perhaps unbelief in God can be a useful asset when it comes to loving your neighbor. The story of the Good Samaritan explains the contradiction.

God does not need large numbers of people who love their neighbor to change the religious/political environment that nurtures division. What he needs is a few people who follow their instincts to love their neighbors as themselves.