Because it is a fundamentally DIFFERENT idea....love another is not anything like doing for those who have less are outcast are the lest....to feed the hungry, help the poor is not the same as loving another. Those acts may come from love of God and a sense of duty but loving another individual is not in and of itself selfless. It is indeed what is taught in Buddhism ...the idea that you should love and honor the ‘god’ that exists within all of us in everything.
RE: .to feed the hungry, help the poor is not the same as loving another.
Let me modify that, .to feed the hungry, help the poor is not NECESSARILY the same as loving another. However it CAN BE a manifestation of true love that exists in one’s heart.
How do you judge if what a person does comes out of love of God or comes from some sense of duty? Only God knows that.
As for the ‘god’ existing within all of us, methinks you are projecting too much of Buddhism and your own way of thinking into Jean Valjean.
All indicators in the story tell us that he was moved by the kindness of a CHRISTIAN Bishop, not some Buddhist monk from the Far East.