Thanksgiving. As I count my blessings today, I find my thoughts turning to the plight of the less (un?) fortunate. I’ve read too much and I’ve seen too much and am at a bit of a loss as to what to do about it all.
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)
But who is my neighbor?
Is it the person living next door? Down the block? Downtown? Down state? Down country? Down Under?
Is it the coworker who’s being crushed by the weight of simultaneous deadlines, the death of her father, and a son who is failing out of high school?
Is it the (maybe/maybe not) homeless guy rattling a coin cup at the Jewel-Osco?
Is it the child slowly wasting away from malnutrition in Somalia due to drought and strife?
Is it the working father of two struggling to make ends meet because she’s working three part-time minimum wage jobs and doesn’t qualify for health insurance through any of them.
Is it the student protester in Iran, critiquing the regime, and possibly risking his life?
Is it 30-year old woman convicted of murder and imprisoned for life, with nothing to turn to and nothing to live for?
Is it the Chinese teenager poisoning herself to death by earning a living in an electronics recycling plant without safey protocols or protective equipment?
Is it the octagenarian grandfather, left alone in a nursing home by his children?
In the passage that follows, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, one’s neighbor is basically whoever you come across that just so happens to be in need. Nowadays, however, you can essentially “come across” just about anyone in any situation anywhere in the world. Not only that, you can provide tangible assistance to them (or at least donate money.) So does that same rule of thumb still hold? If so, the number of neighbors we have is overwhelming, and if not, who does it no longer hold true for?
I imagine that this is all a little charade in my head, my Ego cleverly constructing excuses for the continued self-preoccupation of my Id. After all, intractable problems are best dealt with by ignoring them and continuing merrily on my way, right? Easier for me, I suppose, but it doesn’t really make things better.
So am I doomed to a lifetime of futile service and crushing guilt for not being able to alleviate more than an infinitesimally miniscule portion of the world’s suffering? To paraphrase a wise friend, while God has called us all to love our neighbors, He also “has a unique calling for each of us.” To one He has given a heart for the homeless. To another, a passion for world peace. And to a third, a desire for racial reconciliation. Each person’s “neighbor” may be different, but all have been called to love and show mercy to others, to reach outside the boundaries of “myself” and “us” and into the lives of “them”.
So, who is _my_ neighbor? I’m not sure yet, but I definitely know who my neighbor isn’t, and it isn’t “me”.
As for what does it mean to love her/him? eh…I’ll deal with that in the future. (To be continued…)
Tags: christianity, Reflection, social justice
I sooo appreciate this post. And I so appreciate you. I, too, often ponder this idea of “neighbor” though I suppose without christianity to guide me I use the word “community” instead. The repercussions of our individual actions on neighbors that we have never met. How to live with that. How to make other people recognize how connected we all really are…
sometimes i wonder if we’ve all just gotten too far ahead of ourselves. There’s this economist, Schumacher, who believes that humans weren’t wired or built to really comprehend things larger than our own physical neighborhoods. The effects of globalization have been/are so devastating in some ways because it doesn’t come naturally to humans to think on such a big scale. In a nutshell, it’s hard for humans to care about people they’ve never met, so maybe we shouldn’t have the power to effect people we haven’t met.
i guess that’s a more pessimistic take on your optimistic spin.
whoops