Our View: Neighborly Love

“Hear, O Israel.” So came the calls over thousands of years to a unique people. The prophets, according to their history, proclaimed God’s commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
We ponder today that last admonition. Common to many religions, the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) is a simple command, but it’s one we’ve found in practice to be, oh, so very hard.
“Sure, we do that,” people may say. “We’re friendly to the folks who live next door and across the street. We donate stuff to the Salvation Army, and we put change in the pots for the bell-ringers at Christmas.” But in doing so, are we showing charity, or simply assuaging a little guilt over our own good fortune?
Do we actually make an effort to get to know our neighbors? That’s arguably a necessary preliminary step to loving them – speaking, sharing, and especially listening.
How can we love them when they park in front of OUR house, or let their dog loose on OUR lawn, or once in 1998 backed into OUR car and never admitted it? Do we have to forgive them all these obvious faults? Well, that would seem a necessary step, too.
The issue may often come down to who, really, are our neighbors? The people we know who live nearby – sure. But that couldn’t include those snobs from Napa, or undocumented immigrants from Mexico, or West-hating Muslims from Iran. If they’re not our neighbors, then we wouldn’t need to love them.
Jesus, as the story goes, was asked in this regard, “Just who IS my neighbor?” To which he is said to have replied with this familiar parable: a Jewish man on a highway is set upon and beaten by bandits, and a priest and then a temple official each happen to walk by, ignoring his cries for help, but a man from Samaria takes pity, dresses his wounds, takes him to an inn, and pays for his care. Jesus asked the question, “Which of these was a neighbor to the beaten man?” The answer, of course, was the one who showed mercy – the good Samaritan. The Jewish people listening would have found this remarkable since Samaria then was an enemy region.
Are followers of Jesus called upon to show love even to their enemies? The Bible has him saying, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Our neighbors, by that reckoning, could include anyone and everyone.
What’s interesting to us is how generous people are in a personal relationship. Most will not hesitate to show charity, mercy and love to someone in need, someone calling for help. Rather, it’s when the relationship is de-personalized, when we accept the walls between families, between cultures, between nations – that’s when it’s easy to show disdain, anger and even hatred.
We’re quick to say that we struggle with these questions personally. We hope that on our good days we can listen, we can forgive, and we can love. We have optimism that all people genuinely do care for others in need, when they can look past the walls they’ve erected in their lives to avoid those very situations.
So when you go out today, join us in trying to acknowledge our neighbors, at least, and maybe to show some love. We bet it’ll be returned many times over, more often than not.