Gary and Marge, Karna and John, Marion and Jay, Linda and George. These are my neighbors. We chat over picket fence; sit on front stoop; crunch chips and salsa together on back patio. Karna feeds my fish and waters my garden when we travel. Marge drives Noah to school when I’m stricken with a stomach bug. I bake an extra loaf of banana bread for George, just because. We take care of one another.
My neighbors include my greater community, too – my colleagues; my church; my friends; the moms and dads I chat with at the school entrance as amber leaves fall. We care for one another, too – lug crock pots of meatballs down linoleum hallways on parent-teacher conference night; offer comfort next to whirring copier as coworker confides.
“Love God and love your neighbor,” Jesus said, and I nod my head yes, I do that, I love my neighbor.
The trouble is, I’m beginning to think my definition of neighbor is too literal.
Richard Stearns asks me, “Who is your neighbor? In the world of haves and have-nots, are we to view poverty-stricken people ten thousand miles away as our neighbors?”
That’s a radical question, if you think about it. A question that challenges me to expand my definition of neighbor.
Stearns goes on to cite some shocking statistics in chapter nine of The Hole in Our Gospel. Consider this:
More than 26,500 children died yesterday of preventable causes related to their poverty, and it will happen again today and tomorrow and the day after that.
Almost 10 million children will be dead in the course of a single year.
Ten million children. Dead in one year.
“Even though we have the awareness, the access and the ability to stop it,” says Stearns, “why have we chosen not to? Perhaps one reason is that these kids who are dying are not our kids; they’re somebody else’s.”
I admit, when I first read this statement, my first thought was: “Whoa now. That’s not fair. You’re judging me, Richard. You’re making a hugely unfair judgment. Of course I care about dying children. How dare you accuse me of not caring.”
But I thought about that statement for a long time, and I realized that Stearns is at least in part right.
Our family sponsors two young women in Africa. Neema and Mary Christian have lost their parents to AIDS. They are orphans. They live at their school, and the checks we send provide their food, clothing, shelter and education for one year.
I can feel good about myself right? I care about poverty-stricken children, right? Because I send money? Because I sign my name to a check once a year and hand it over to my church?
The problem is, Neema and Mary don’t always feel real to me. We exchange letters three or so times a year. Noah and Rowan draw them pictures that I tuck into envelopes. I pray for them. Their photographs hang on our refrigerator.
But I have never wrapped my arms around their shoulders. Never felt their skin against mine. Never looked into their eyes, touched their hand or cheek.
As Stearns points out, “The plight of suffering children in a far-off land simply hasn’t gotten personal for us.”
Neema and Mary feel far less real to me than Marge next door and Karna two houses down.
Don’t get me wrong. Loving our immediate neighbors is important; Jesus was speaking literally when he commanded that we love our neighbors. He was talking about the widower next door; the grieving coworker; the homeless person holding the wrinkled cardboard sign in front of SuperSaver.
But I’m beginning to think Jesus also meant more.
Honestly, I don’t know what this means for me. I struggle, turning these questions over in my head and heart. But I do know this:
I have. I have a lot. And others have not. And this truth, for me, is a start.
“Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: ‘He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.’” 2 Corinthians 8:13-15
“The most serious and universal problem is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on earth. Citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now 75 times richer than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the separation is increasing every year.”
President Jimmy Carter, Nobel lecture, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, 2002.
What do you think about Richard Stearns’ declaration that the plight of suffering children hasn’t gotten personal for us? Too radical? Unfair? Right on the money?
This post is Part 3 in my five-week series “Lessons from the Hole” (a response to Richard Stearns’ book The Hole in Our Gospel). Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2.
Next week’s topic: Less Than $1 A Day.
