One of the scribes came up and asked [Jesus], “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, Hear, O Israel:The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” -Mark 12:28-31
Anytime I write a critical blog post, Jesus' warning to look to the plank in my own eye before the sliver in my neighbor's eye comes to my mind, so I want to be up front that this is hard for me too sometimes. I'm a lot like Linus in the the picture up there. Sometimes, too much. An co-worker quipped once about me that "Porter doesn't have friends, he just tolerates some people more than others". She wasn't completely right, I do have friends, but man, she wasn't far off either.
A few years ago, the Barna Research group did an in depth study of how people perceive the church. They interviewed thousands of people over a three year period and published their findings in a book called “unChristian: what a new generation really thinks about Christianity.”
They found that to Outsiders, people who don’t go to church, aged 16-29:
- 91% said Christians are anti-homosexuals. (Note that this is not homosexuality per se, but homosexuals. The people.)
- 87% said we are judgmental.
- 72% said we are out of touch with reality.
- 70% said that we were insensitive to others.
Now, you might be thinking, these are 16-29 year olds - what do they know? Well, I was a youth minister for a long time, and I can tell you that the teenage years are confusing and a very influential time in many young people’s lives. But, the fact is, the values and opinions that they form during this age range can be very formative to how they live out the rest of their lives.
Also, this age range is probably the unspoken target age for nearly every church in America. Take a look around your church - how many 16-29 year olds do you have? Churches that are growing are specifically targeting this group.
Anyway - the point here is that the perception out there is that we are not a very loving people. Jesus said that “they would know us by our love” - yet too many people know us for what we are against more than what we are for - and that is tragic.
The question here is this: how do we love our neighbors? When Jesus was asked this question, he told a story about a man who was beaten and robbed and left beside the road. A couple of religious figures passed the man by, but wouldn’t help him, in fact they went out of their way to avoid him. Then a Samaritan came by. An “enemy” if you will, of the beaten man. And this unlikely person is the one who helped him.
Now, we could talk about that, and it is a good story and it fits well. The point of the story is that everyone is our neighbor - and even those we’d consider our enemies deserve our love. but I think sometimes we take too narrow a view of the story. So far, I’ve never run into a Nazi or a Terrorist or an Alt-Right Member laying on the side of the road needing my help, so I figure I’m doing pretty good at this loving my neighbor thing. I mean, I don’t hate my neighbor.
Here’s the thing, though. Not hating your neighbor is not the same as loving your neighbor. So the question comes up again… how do we love our neighbor?
Well, this isn’t going to probably sound right, but the thing is, I don’t know how to answer that exactly. But I can tell you what it’s not.
A while back, the state of Oklahoma executed a man. The executed man was convicted of shooting a 19 year old girl and then burying her alive.
Something went wrong during the execution.
The first drug they gave him was supposed to knock him out so that the drugs they gave him afterward, which are known to cause agonizing suffocation and pain aren’t felt. But he did feel them. He was conscious and, well, it was ugly.
The next day, a local news outlet ran a story about it on their Facebook page. There were 54 comments. I want you to read some of them.
- “Did his victim die a nice calm death? I doubt it, so who cares?”
- “I’d say mission accomplished!”
- “I’m sorry, but I don’t have ANY sympathy for a murderer who is executed and has his ending be better than the unfortunate person he murdered! Just not gonna happen!”
- “What he got was way better than what his victim got.”
- “They should have leaned in and asked him very sweetly if hie was comfortable. Then said “good”. What is wrong with these people who think murderers should be given more rights than they gave their victims?”
- “He deserved worse”
- “Are we supposed to feel sorry for him?”
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Too many Facebook posts fit this description.[/caption]I could go on… there were plenty more like these. Out of these comments, there was only one that was different - “I’ve never been more heartbroken with the thread of comments!” This person identified herself as a follower of Christ. She admitted that she is angry at this man, as anyone would be, but that as a Christian, she could not rejoice in what happened to this man either.
One of the negative comments was “are we supposed to feel sorry for him?” Well, if we truly love our neighbor, maybe the answer is yes. What happened to him shouldn’t have happened to him any more than what happened to his victim.
After reading this, I started to ask someone I knew if they had heard about this botched execution. Before I could really finish, this person said, “Yeah, it was great wasn’t it? He got what he deserved.” I was kind of shocked. This person didn't go to my church, but he does go, every week. So, I asked a few other people - all Christians, according to them, and I was amazed that most people I talked to felt the same way. “He deserved it. The bible says an eye for an eye - they should have buried him alive the way he did her.”
How do we love our neighbor? I’m not sure I can give a short answer to that, but this isn’t it.
In Jesus’ most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus addresses this issue specifically:
"Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: ‘Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, gift-wrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.
“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
Loving our neighbor not an easy thing. And the world doesn’t see it as a “normal” thing - but maybe the world shouldn’t see us as “normal” - we belong to a different Kingdom, with a King that loves us completely, even though he knows every messed up thing about us.
Maybe the least we can do is to love everyone despite the things that we think know about them - it doesn’t mean that we condone the things they do. It means that we accept them for who they are, without trying to “fix” them before we even get to know them. It may mean realizing that we can’t “fix” them, but loving them anyway.
It's not easy. I'll be the first to admit that Facebook makes it hard sometimes to be charitable to even our friends when they post something we consider offensive, let alone those who aren't really our friends but friends of friends. But they are still our neighbor. Perhaps the best thing to do is to not engage and inflame but to walk away and pray. I've had to leave groups before to avoid saying things I knew I would later regret.
Jesus said that when we clothe the naked, we clothe him. When we feed the hungry, we feed him. When we visit those in prison, we visit him. And when we fail to do these things, we also fail him. I submit that when we love our neighbor, we are also loving Him, and if we fail to... well, maybe we should work on that.
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