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Mutual Aid Isn’t New: Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself

Mutual Aid Isn’t New: Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself

Last updated on: February 2, 2026 at 4:28 pm by Elisa S. Johnston

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Mutual Aid Isn’t New: Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself 2026-02-02T16:28:23-08:00 Elisa S. Johnston

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Recently I had a hysterectomy. In this season of recovery, when meals were brought to me in bed, and my kids were watched by friends, I’ve been reminded me of an advocacy term we occasionally hear thrown around–mutual aid. When I first looked up the definition of mutual aid many years back, I began to laugh. It’s not that mutual aid is silly, but it felt like it was naming something as if it is a phenomenon when it was really something that is part of our identity as believers. To those of us of faith, who have been taught “love your neighbors as yourself” from our earliest years, mutual aid is a given.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, with the word “love” in the air let’s start by defining mutual aid.

While recovering from my hysterectomy I’ve been thinking about the term “mutual aid” (Image by Febrian Zakaria

What is Mutual Aid?

At its core, then, what is mutual aid? Mutual aid means solidarity, shared responsibility, and caring for one another’s well-being. It is building community. What is notable about mutual aid, though, is that it is action on behalf of others outside formal charity systems or government programs. Quite simply, mutual aid just means people showing up for each other.

How do Christians Practice Mutual Aid?

I grew up in Christian communities that genuinely lived this out. Mutual care wasn’t a strategy or a program. Mutual Aid was how Christians in the body of Christ act.

It brings to mind this verse from Galatians 6:10 (NLT):

“Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone—especially to those in the family of faith.”

If someone gets sick, meals are provided. If someone feels overwhelmed, houses are cleaned, children are cared for, and rides are offered. If someone is grieving, they are not left alone. Yes, this is what it means to follow Jesus. As Christians we laugh with those who laugh and show empathy and sorrow with those experiencing sorrow. On a broader level, it is practicing the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, restoration and justice for the pursuit of collective flourishing. This is what we do for all, when we see God’s image in the humans He created.

Living out mutual aid is at the core of Christian doctrine, even if we might call it loving our neighbor instead.

When Mutual Aid Falls Short

And yet, as much as mutual care has shaped my faith, I’ve also seen its absence. I remember going on a small internal rampage after the birth of my third child—For the Love of Lasagna!—when my family received two full weeks of meals, while a friend in the same church, navigating her own postpartum season, was offered only a few days. It really bothered me. Not because people in my faith community weren’t generous, but because they weren’t equal in generosity. I was on that church’s staff at the time and knew everyone. But the other family, although still part of the community, weren’t as connected.

Maybe this is the problem with mutual aid. It is based on the community seeing you and choosing to respond in love to your need. But developing and growing a community around you takes time, investment, and love. But someone who is introverted, or sick, as examples, aren’t able to invest as much to develop community. We can’t forget people just because they haven’t been able to invest and give back as much. Not because generosity had failed, but because it had been uneven.

When People Love Their Neighbor As Themselves

I like to call mutual aid loving my neighbor, because I’ve seen people transformed by others’ care, and it is love that transforms.

I’ve seen people stunned by the simplest gestures of care—by shared resources, meals, by offers to help, by someone simply showing up. I’ve seen people weeping not because the help they received was extravagant, but because it was so unfamiliar to them. Many had never experienced this kind of love before.

Not everyone has actually been cared for in community. Not everyone has experienced love, as if they were loved equally by another.

Scripture gives us language for this kind of life. On the night before his death, Jesus told his disciples, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34). This love was not an abstract idea. It was embodied, costly, and of course, mutual. Jesus washed feet and he shared meals. Jesus noticed bodies and burdens.

Jesus did not love others from a distance, but through presence and proximity.

Loving Others as Yourself Means Allowing Yourself To Be Loved, Too

As I’ve been recovering from a hysterectomy, I’ve been reminded just how countercultural the “love your neighbor as yourself” command still is. I needed prayer, meals, rides for my kids, and emotional support. I am not always the best at asking, and I needed the encouragement of people in my community to do so. But when I finally did, I was rewarded.

There were old lies that told me I was being “too needy,” that I should manage on my own, that worth is tied to usefulness. But following Jesus means allowing ourselves to be loved as much as it means learning to love others.

Elisa Johnston recovering from a hysterectomy and learning about mutual aid

My Hysterectomy is help me understand “Loving your neighbor as yourself” (Image: Elisa Johnston)

Receiving and Giving Mutual Aid

Over the years—especially during seasons of illness, lupus, and crisis—I’ve had to relearn this truth: mutuality is not weakness. It is discipleship to give and also be to given. We are loved because God first loved us, right? When we only give and never receive, we turn love into performance. Allowing ourselves to receive always dissolves distant charity into personal partnership. Saviorism gives way to shared humanity, an essential element of care that pulls down inequality and looks like heaven on earth.

Care has come to my family in many forms: meals, encouragement, rides, prayers, and even a coloring book gifted by a woman I barely know. This woman called us “hyster-sisters,” which seemed ridiculous at first, but then I realized it was a tender endearment that I want to hold onto.

But I didn’t just get to take from others. In turn, I was able to pass along unused period supplies. I listened to other women’s stories of pain and dismissal. These were stories shaped not just by failing uteruses, but by systems and theologies that have too often ignored women’s bodies. Just last week, I mailed the coloring book gifted to me to someone else, passing it on to encourage someone else navigating her own recovery.

Mutual Aid Isn’t New

This is how love moves and transforms. Love doesn’t stop with one person, as Mother Teresa is often quotes, it ripples outward.

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

The prophet Amos imagined justice this way: like water, like a river that keeps flowing. Mutual aid—community care, loving our neighbor, bearing one another’s burdens—whatever you call it, is not a modern invention. It is our ancient faith made visible. Mutual aid is how the body of Christ learns to flourish together and to genuinely have relationships that display God’s love with the rest of world.

Reflection Questions on Loving Your Neighbor as Yourself:

1. Where in your life is it easier to give love than to receive it? Why is that? How can you make room for this to change?

2. Who do you know who might be longing to be loved, needing mutual aid outside of the big systems? What would it look like to show up for them?

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About Elisa Johnston

Elisa Johnston is the author of Justice-Minded Kids and The Life Mapping Workbook. She writes, coaches, consults, and speaks through Average Advocate, empowering everyday people to be changemakers with confidence and sustainably. She also writes about paradigms, faith, and experiences through her perspective as an activist, coach & leader on Substack at Authentically Elisa. She loves exploring between the mountains in the sea in her home of San Diego with her four kids, husband, and introverted friends. You can read more about the author here.

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