Love My Neighbor? It's on My Bucket List!

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

The story in Luke 10:25-27 is a familiar story we have heard since we where kids in Sunday School.  A prominent member of society encounters Jesus and attempts to trap him with a question about the law.  The lawyer in the parable knew the law;  i.e. Love God and love neighbor but possibly trying to make himself look good to the crowd he chose to attempt to narrow the definition of “neighbor.” Jesus patiently, lovingly responds with a parable making a despised person the hero.

How might that story be told today?  Rather than the “Good Samaritan,” today the hero might be

  • the “good homeless person,”
  • the “good homosexual,”
  • the “good person who crossed the border illegally,”
  • the “good Muslim,”
  • the “good atheist,”
  • the “good Republican,”
  • the “good Democrat,”
  • the “good Progressive,”
  • the “good Traditionalist,”
  • the “good person with a different skin pigment,”
  • the “good person who has had an abortion,”
  • the “good person who has performed abortions,”
  • the “good person who is carrying an invisible burden,”

or any other label to pigeonhole a fellow human being in order to look and feel superior.

Looking around today, words that are so common such as “polarization” and “division”  seem to mark how human beings relate to each other, and the damage is immense.  The effort seems directed to finding the bad/wrong/unpleasant and to catch another person doing something we find unacceptable. Looking at a completely white piece of paper we search for a flaw, a tiny spot, that is deemed imperfect and therefore bad.

The insistence to find mistakes can take a great toll on each person”s spiritual health. In Scripture there are many reminders of the unhealthy results of our actions.

  • Proverbs 17:22 "Being cheerful keeps you healthy it is slow death to be gloomy all the time"  
  • Proverbs 15:13 "A joyful heart makes a cheerful countenance, but sorrow of the heart crushes the spirit"
  • Proverbs 12:25  "Anxiety weighs down the heart of a man, but a good word cheers it up"
  • Proverbs 18:21  "Words kill, words give life; they”re either poison of fruit-you choose"
  • Proverbs 11;17  "When you”re kind to others, you help yourself.  When you”re cruel to others, you hurt yourself"
  • Proverbs 15:13   "Happiness makes a person smile,  But sadness breaks a person”s spirit" 
  • Philippians 4:8  ”if anything can be seen as good and honorable, think deeply on those things.  Things that are true and noble, upright and pure, full of beauty and worthy of respect" 
  • Romans 12:2  "Do not permit the way of this world to mold and shape you.  Instead, let the Creator change you from the inside out"
  • Ephesians 4:29  "Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an envouragement to those who hear them."

The search for the negative seems to be deeply ingrained in our responses to others. The first book published in North America was “The New England Primer,” which is a schoolbook to teach children the alphabet and how to read.  Starting with the letter "A" we read; “In Adam”s fall, we sinned all” planting the seeds at a very early age that we all miss the mark (sin) and therefore everything is all bad, doom, gloom.

Today, the United Methodist denomination is being shredded in a horrifying dichotomous approach of “either/or,” “left/right,” “Traditionalist/Progressive.” Likewise, the country and the world are being ripped apart with polarizing labels, anger, hatred, and confrontation.

Hearing such statements as;  ”the problem in the church started back 54 years ago” makes me wonder why anyone would have wasted their God-given gifts being mad all of that time! The idea expressed in I Corinthians 13 that, “love does not demand its own way” almost seems to be extinct.

The basic law of “love your neighbor as you love yourself” brings some deep sadness seeing how people respond to their fellow astronauts on Spaceship Earth.  I wonder:

  1. If the way love is shown demonstrates how one loves self,  If that's true, there are a great number of people with a very poor self-image who do not know that God loves each of us Unconditionally without labels or pigeon-holing.  The God that I know wants a relationship not reprisal,
  2. If, loving one”s neighbor is on the bucket list and will be the goal after   
  1. We win;
  2. We get our way and “what is rightfully ours;”
  3. We thoroughly devastate the “others.”

Then maybe, the entire concept of "Love God and neighbor" is meaningless?

"Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." Focus on finding the positive, and celebrating the edifying instead of blindly centering on the negative. The great philosopher, Pogo the Possum, said:  "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"

Wil Meiklejohn of Pueblo West, Colo., is a retired Doctor of Optometry currently serving as a Certified Lay Minister in the Trinity District of the Mountain Sky Annual Conference.  His legacy background in the Methodist/United Methodist Church goes back more than 125 years through direct family connections.