How to Love Your Neighbor | Healthy Aging Series: S12 E18
A Blue Dude Living in a Red Neighborhood
I live in a Red State. And in a Red County. My neighborhood is mostly Red. It’s a small neighborhood. Not very diverse unless you count the 2 white-passing women with Middle Eastern descent. I’m very fond of one of them.
Thus far, I have very little in common with my neighbors, I’m blue. Having said that, there are three other veterans, and like me it seems like half of the neighborhood is receiving Social Security benefits. So, maybe I share more things with my neighbors than I think. Regardless of the differences, and I would come to their aid at the drop of a hat. If called upon, I would help them at any time of day or night. They are my neighbors. They are good people. And though we have our differences, and some of those differences run deep, they are my neighbors.
Who are your neighbors?
I’ve shared in previous blogs that I have many years of education and experience in the Christian Ministry, and though I made a course change almost 40 years ago, I still do “personal CEU’s” In Biblical and Theological studies.
I’ve also kept my eyes on the Christian landscape these past 10 years and I’ve been troubled by the way People of Faith have treated their neighbors. Not their “next-door-neighbor” neighbors, but they’re “Good Samaritan” neighbors. I find it odd and disturbing the way that a nation full of Christians neglects some of the core ideas and principles of the person they follow. And let me make something clear, I’m not talking about immigration enforcement. I’m not talking about open borders. I’m not talking about enforcing the law. I am talking about the mean and callous way we treat people of color, people from places that speak a different language, or practice a different faith, like Islam, or people who want to follow a different inner compass, like those who chose to live out their lives as a man or woman despite what their birth certificate says.
My neighbors, your neighbors are not defined by their similarities but by their differences.
In Luke 10: 26-37, Jesus was schooling some religious experts and was asked about they could inherit eternal life. It was a trap. Jesus asked the expert what was written in the Scriptures, and his answer was, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus said, “That’s right, do that.” The man responds, “Who is my neighbor?”
This is where Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, and he flips the definition from your trying to figure out who is and isn’t your neighbor to how should I act as a neighbor. I think he was saying something similar to the phrase, “Wherever you go, there you are.” The real question isn’t, ‘Who are my neighbors?” It’s, “Am I being a neighbor?”
What matters is not who you encounter (them), but who they encounter (you).
Jesus is saying, be the neighbor that others need, be a neighbor to anyone and everyone you encounter. Being a neighbor means helping others despite their differences both ideological and geographical. In my studies this past year I’ve wanted to address an issue that has plagued the Christian Church, bigotry.
I ran across a recent book, “The Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism,” by Steven Patterson.
Patterson is a professor at Willamette University and teaches religion and ethical studies. He was awarded the Grawemeyer Award in Religion (University of Louisville) for this book. I strongly encourage you to buy it and read it!
Patterson proposes that the early followers of the Jesus Revolution had a creed that they recited at baptism. The early followers of Jesus were dealing with racism, gender issues, slavery, and conflicts between Greeks and Jews, and this creed was the statement of their core beliefs about how to be a neighbor.
What Patterson has called, “The Forgotten Creed,” I have renamed, “The Good Neighbor Creed.”
For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
For as many of you who have been baptized have put on Christ:
There is no Jew or Greek,
there is no slave or free,
there is* no male and female,
for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:26-37
This creed was around before the gospels and the epistles. “This Creed claims,” writes Patterson, “that there is no us, no them. We are all one. We are all children of God.”
Patterson continues, “This creed was originally about the fact that race, class, and gender are typically used to divide the human race into us and them to the advantage of us. History reminds us again and again that it has always been easier to believe in miracles, and virgin births and atoning deaths, and resurrected bodies and heavenly journeys home, then something so simple and basic as human solidarity.”
In our world today there is no “us” and “them.”
No Gay versus Straight.
No Cisgender versus Transgender.
No Black versus White.
No Rich versus Poor.
No Theist versus Atheist.
No Men versus Women.
No Red versus Blue.
The early Jesus revolutionaries figured it out. They figured out that the only hope for the Jesus Revolution, and, for that matter, the world, was the Good Neighbor Creed.
Moving from “us” and “them” to “we.”
Everyone counts or no one counts.
I am a neighbor to all, or I am not a neighbor.
Inheriting the Kingdom of God is about who you count as a neighbor.
If you refuse to be a neighbor to a transgender woman, you lose the Kingdom!
If you refuse to be a neighbor to brown-skinned undocumented immigrants, you lose the Kingdom!
If you refuse to be a neighbor to people who vote Red or Blue, you lose the Kingdom!
If you refuse to be a neighbor to Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, or Atheists, you lose the Kingdom!
Loving your neighbor is all about you. It’s all about your bigotry. It’s about erasing all those lines in the sand that you have drawn between you and other people.
It’s about showing pity to those in need, bandaging their wounds and trauma, attending to them, finding them shelter, and ensuring that they’re cared for, regardless of who they are and because of who you are, a neighbor.
It’s not a stretch to also see the Greek word that is translated “neighbor” can also be translated as “fellow human.”
We begin to love our neighbor when we see everyone as a fellow human being, and care for them, not just the ones we agree with or look like, but everyone.
If you want to know how to love you neighbor and inherit the Kingdom, try loving them as you love yourself.
