Neighbor

Two Porches and the Moon's Special Honey

Abbie Smith — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 09:24:39 -0800

For a while I wondered why Jesus went to the cross. Seemed a little extreme. I was a decent person, relatively speaking, and quite liked the idea of being judged based on my rule following. A gifted Pharisee seems to have no fear of morality. What she fears, rather, are things like love and forgiveness and living by faith alone.

Someday maybe I’ll write a book about the characters that line our street. Today I’ll simply mention two, and how they’ve been gnawing away at my Pharisee-prone compulsions.

We live in a transitional community, so it’s constantly lending lessons and paradigm-shifts to concepts like “family,” “wealth,” or “the Gospel.” A neighbor and close friend of ours, whose name I’ll leave concealed, knocked yesterday at 8am. As far as we knew, he’d been sober since February, aside from an alcohol binge last month, which stuck him in jail for seven days. Micah has been friends with this fella for years, gleaning from his carpentry skills, among other talents.

I remember the first time we had him to dinner, and how oddly glamorous—sickeningly virtuous, even—was the sensation of having an ex-convict in my home. The glamour wore-off quickly, however, as meal upon meal, plus prayers and rides and encouragements and lendings of petty cash added up to what seemed like nothing. Addictive patterns remained and this neighbor’s growth seemed neutral, at best. But most days my capacities of hope and serving this troubled neighbor remained. He didn’t put me out any and sometimes would even bring over a home-cooked meal, or lend a hand around our house.

But yesterday hit a roadblock.

Our friend had been on a three-day binge—in a matter of minutes, smearing his latest record with drugs, alcohol, stealing and shacking-up with at least one prostitute.

He arrived at our door shaking and ashamed. His car had been stolen, his cell-phone dead and his pockets empty. What had been a delightful and tidy Thursday morning quickly went sour.

What did forgiveness mean as we stood on the porch? What did it mean to love this neighbor of ours, granting him stains of the Gospel and Cross, by which we had been touched time and again?

Punishment told us to close the door and go our own way.

But Forgivness said, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven,” for you, too, are forgiven at such lengths.

I lent our neighbor my car and phone for the “hour” it would take to unclutter some of the mess he’d made. He returned in closer to eight, petitioning for food and another ride. What an inconvenience to my day—what an annoyance to my expectations of November 18^th—what a lesson toward understanding forgiveness. Apparently giving, and forgiving are a lot easier when they don’t require anything. But apparently ease, along with glamour, tidiness, or convenience, are not ways to true forgiveness, at least if we’re going the Jesus way.

Neighbor #2 as my latest teacher is Marcus. Marcus is seven and lives about a stone’s throw away, in the house diagonal from ours. He’s one of five children, each from a different dad and raised by the care of a drug-addicted mom.

Upon returning from our honeymoon, one of the first things we did was visit Marcus and his sister, America. He was playing on his porch and welcomed us with a tender grin (minus two teeth that, “the tooth fairy’d stole without asking when we went away”).

“Guess what, Marcus? The wedding countdown for Mr. Micah and me is done. We got married and went on our honeymoon, and now I get to be your full-time neighbor!”

“Gettin’ married means you go all the way to the moon to eat special honey?”

“No sweetie,” I said with a smile. “A honeymoon is a vacation after a wedding. And getting married means…well…that I get to live with my best friend and learn about things like love and forgiveness and living by faith alone.”

“Oh. Do you wanna see the fort I made while you went away?”

“I’d love to, dear.”

Love Your Neighbor and Don’t Tax Him

John Mark Reynolds — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:29:12 -0800

Moral men have a duty to help their neighbors, but nobody has the right to force other people to help.

Jesus told a story of a Good Samaritan who crossed difficult social and cultural barriers to provide relief to an injured man. This is a good model for our own behavior. We should help the hurting neighbor even if he is a pariah in our community. The mortgage broker who has lost his job is also my neighbor and, when he is hurting and repentant, should receive pity, charity, and care—not just sermons about his errors.

Moral behavior is most valuable when it is not easy to do. The temptation is to avoid doing our moral duty by ignoring it or passing off the dirty work to somebody else.

The Scroogish Samaritan ignores his moral duty to help his neighbor. He assumes everybody should care only for self and destroys common culture by his selfishness. The Statist Samaritan forces everybody else to help the injured man and so gains a cheap feeling of virtue, but undermines any real virtue.

The Scrooge believes that it is enough for “a man to mind his own business” and forgets that he is tied to the fate of everyone else in his common culture. History shows prosperity cannot last when it is dependent on the hopeless poverty of others.

It is immoral to allow such an unjust system to survive. Even in a perfectly just society, it would be useless to lecture the hurting about their mistakes before dealing with their pain.

Telling a hungry mother with starving children about the virtues of liberty without first feeding her is cruel and breeds revolutions. The moral man must deal with the blinding pain in the hurting before he tries to show the victim a way to avoid future hurts.

It is true that you should teach a man to fish and not just give him a fish, but before teaching him to fish he has to be fit to learn. You cannot teach a starving man to fish. First, give him a fish. Second, teach him the skills that will give him the ability to become a giver of charity and not just a receiver. The goal of any charity is to allow the man who receives it to also be able to gain the astounding blessings of being a giver.

Sadly, it is so much more blessed to give than to receive that the Statist Samaritan tries to give all the blessings to the state. He loves the state and so wishes to turn everyone’s appreciation for charity to it.

Not surprisingly charity that is coerced does harm to everyone. The injured party may be helped at first, but only at the cost of doing injustice to others. Taxing Peter forces Peter to help Paul, often does little for Paul, and almost certainly will make Peter resent Paul. Peter should help Paul, but making him do it will teach both men bad lessons. The taxed feels resentment as the object of his charity lacks a human face—he gives his coerced taxes to faceless bureaucracy—and the recipient becomes the ward of government.

When we pass our moral duties over to the state, we lose the power to do charity ourselves, turn an act of charity into coercion, and give the state too much power. People are habituated to look to the state to meet their needs and not their communities, churches, and family. This weakens every non-state institution and risks tyranny.

Forced charity is inefficient because it rarely distinguishes between worthy and unworthy attempts at charity. By cutting everyone a check or putting everyone in “one size fits all” programs it is radically inefficient and often harms the giver and the recipient. The government takes a slice of the money in order to maintain the program. Often the program itself will outlive its usefulness, but keep using tax money. The closest thing to immortality ever created by humankind is a government program.

Forced charity is bad for us because in removing our liberty to choose between goods it makes us perpetual dependents. No good person wants to be perpetually dependent on his neighbor, because his neighbor has a face and knows him. It is much easier to become a perpetual dependent on the government, because the government is faceless.

Of course, in some extraordinary circumstances the community itself has been devastated or is so dysfunctional that the state must act. A horrific natural disaster can leave too few neighbors left to help. A deeply embedded racist culture can use local state power and cultural institutions to practice injustice. In such horrific cases, federal power may be necessary to solve gross problems.

Christianity and natural law teach that good men and women should help each other. This charity is best when it is private and not coerced. American popular culture would be wise to celebrate the Samaritan and stop holding up as heroic the conspicuous consumers, Scrooges, or Statists.

What My Pot-Growing Neighbor Taught Me About Theology

Carolyn Arends — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:08:32 -0800

My January Christianity Today column is now online ... and presented here for your perusal. Lemme know what you think!

There Goes The Neighborhood

Do I have to love my neighbor if he breaks the law?

We used to live on a street in Surrey, British Columbia, we called "the Mother of All Cul-De-Sacs." The space between the houses was large enough to accommodate a dozen parked cars or a spirited soccer match. Our daughter learned to walk in that cul-de-sac, and our son shot his first basket into a full-sized hoop there. (Granted, he was on his father's shoulders at the time.) Every night, a dozen kids would spill onto the street with bikes or hockey sticks, and we would congratulate ourselves on having selected the perfect neighborhood.

A year after we moved in, the street's complexion changed. Several of the young families moved away, and we had a hard time getting to know our new neighbors.

We heard nasty rumors that certain residents were using their homes to grow marijuana. "Grow-ops" were a rampant problem in our area, but my husband and I doubted we were sharing fences with criminals. Our friendly neighbor to the right, "Van," had recently arrived in Canada but was working hard on his English. Our neighbors to the left, an older couple who gardened relentlessly, seemed reserved but agreeable.

One afternoon, my kids and I noticed a flurry of activity. We watched as our neighbors on both sides were chased and cuffed by police, and truckloads of plants and equipment were pulled out of each of their residences. A sign declaring the area to be the site of a successful drug bust was proudly displayed—in our driveway!

My husband arrived home and intercepted one of the officers walking across our lawn. Our four-year-old eavesdropped on their conversation and ran back to me. "Our neighbors were arrested for throwing dough," he said, confused and troubled. "Why aren't you allowed to throw dough?" I wasn't sure whether to clarify that the officer had actually said "growing dope."

That night, the more I wrestled with how to explain the day's events to our kids, the angrier I got. How dare those people invade our neighborhood and expose our children to dangerous criminal elements?

I was still fuming the next day when I left to perform at an event called "Love Surrey." Area pastors had organized a multidenominational outdoor service in an effort to reach out to the community—just the sort of thing I love to support. But my anger boiled backstage as some friends warned me that grow-op owners are often quickly released and face minimal repercussions.

I returned home to see Van standing in the middle of our formerly kid-friendly cul-de-sac, holding a Coke can and chatting with my husband. I was seething when Mark walked into the house 30 minutes later.

"I can't believe he's a free man," I hissed.

"Yeah," Mark shrugged. "The laws are pretty weak. But …"

"But what?" I asked, incredulous.

"Van feels terrible." Mark sighed. "He's been out there pulling tiny weeds from the cul-de-sac garden, stuffing them into that Coke can. He's trying to show everyone how sorry he is. He keeps promising it will never happen again."

As Mark told me some of Van's story (a sad tale of personal tragedy, poor choices, and exploitation by people higher up the criminal food chain), I had a sudden epiphany.

Van was my neighbor.

Of course I knew he lived next door, but I realized with a start that Van was my neighbor in the "love your neighbor as yourself" sense. It dawned on me that if I had been the lawyer trying to define the law in Luke's gospel, Jesus could have told me a story about a pot grower in Surrey.

I looked down at the new "Love Surrey" T-shirt I was wearing and winced, remembering Charles Schultz's ironic words: "I love mankind; it's just people I can't stand." I had known—preached, even—love of neighbor in the abstract. I had believed that the point of the Good Samaritan parable was that my neighbor is anyone who needs my help. But I had been thinking more of innocent victims in Africa than of drug-producing villains on my street.

I hope the kindness we eventually decided to show Van helped him change half as much as he changed the way we see the people around us. The driven professional with the BMW, the retiree with the yappy dog, the new immigrant too shy to make eye contact—these are our neighbors. And if we love the God who made them, we will love them as we love ourselves.

C. S. Lewisobserves, "There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal." There are six billion residents on this cul-de-sac we call home, each of them bearing the image of God, each of them a neighbor to be loved. We might as well start with the immortals next door.