Daily Inspiration Quote by Jacques Ellul

Ellul’s line is a deliberate affront to the modern habit of treating “community” as a thing we can engineer. He isn’t praising neighborliness in the abstract; he’s narrowing the claim to a hard edge: the only force that can actually bind one person to another, without turning the bond into manipulation, is the Holy Spirit. That exclusivity matters. It’s a theological statement, but also a political and technological critique in miniature.

Ellul wrote as someone who watched institutions, ideologies, and “good causes” routinely counterfeit intimacy. In a society addicted to technique - to the idea that the right methods, programs, or messaging can reliably produce human outcomes - even love of neighbor becomes a project: a measurable deliverable, a social policy objective, a brand value. Ellul suspects that when we try to manufacture the link, we end up controlling it. The neighbor becomes a role (“the vulnerable,” “the voter,” “the other side”) rather than an irreducible person.

The subtext is both humbling and suspicious of our best intentions. Humbling, because it denies the ego the starring role: you can’t will yourself into the kind of relation that survives resentment, fear, status, and the itch to dominate. Suspicious, because it implies that purely human attempts at solidarity can be spiritually hollow or even coercive, especially when they’re mediated by systems that reward conformity and performance.

Ellul’s intent isn’t quietism. It’s a reordering of agency: real communion is gift, not product. That makes the “neighbor” less a moral trophy and more a test of whether your love is free.