Be The Neighbor The World Needs You To Be
This week’s Courier Herald column:
I don’t have the answers. At this point, I’m not even sure we’re asking the right questions.
A nation already on edge over experiencing a public health crisis simultaneously with the greatest economic challenge in a century is now dealing with public protests and riots. Our divided nation seems only united by shared anxiety and pain.
Like too many problems we face, social media has the ability to provide a comfortable bubble of like-minded people who can affirm our predisposed beliefs. We can scream and scream that others are the problem while receiving likes from those that agree, and block those who do not.
I mostly avoided social media over the weekend while peaceful protests over the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and others devolved into riots. The quick scans I observed were filled with people shouting that others must listen, but few themselves willing to do the same.
I’ve decided that, for myself, when the world gets noisy it is time to get quiet. The last thing we need right now is another “hot take”, and it’s impossible to listen while talking.
Quiet reflection yields to the reality that the problems we face are bigger than any one of us. We have a role to play, but no single one of us will fix the myriad of problems we face.
I have no issues with yielding ultimate responsibility to a higher power, nor for asking in guidance and understanding. My thoughts sent me to Old Testament and New Testament lessons.
Genesis 11 begins with the story of the Tower of Babel. The people of a great land were only a few generations after being delivered from the great flood, but they had become too impressed with their own intelligence to worship. They instead decided to build a great tower as a monument to themselves and their own self-reliance.
The tower crashed down, and the people suddenly couldn’t understand each other.
Thousands of years later we have a still young “one nation, under God” with people screaming words like justice, equality, opportunity, and fairness past each other, each having differing ideas of what these concepts mean. We have become one nation divided by a common language. We barely feign attempts to understand each other.
Were that the end of the story the anxiety we’re experiencing would offer little divine relief or hope. The New Testament gives us that, with some specific directives.
The Old Testament gives us ten commandments. The 22nd Chapter of the Book of Matthew gave us an 11th: Love your neighbor.
The directive is simple enough and yet not, so we were brought a parable in the 10th Chapter of Luke to answer the question “Who is our neighbor?”
In the story, a man was traveling down a road, minding his own business, when he was robbed, stripped and beaten. A priest – the highest representative of law and order of that day – passed by and did nothing. A Levite – a person welcome in the highest of society’s circles – also was too busy to see or help. It was an outcast – a Samaritan – that interrupted his travel and made sure the victim was rescued and brought back to health.
The story is often told to emphasize the power of interrupting our routine or agenda to help another in need, but the question asked at the end of the story punctuates it’s meaning, with Jesus asking who of the three men in the story proved to be the innocent man’s neighbor.
Who is George Floyd’s neighbor? Who is Ahmaud Arbery’s neighbor? Who is the neighbor of the shopkeeper having to replace windows and merchandise lost in a riot? Who is the neighbor of the policeman now standing in angry crowds to protect both them and those in the path of the protests?
The world doesn’t need more shouting. We need more of us to be a good neighbor.
About Author
Charlie
Founder of GeorgiaPol.com; Now weekly columnist Very interested in Georgia and Georginas. Interest in politics is waning daily.
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While some may not be as fascinated with it as I am, there is a rich and imperfectly known history about what exactly a Samaritan is. At the time of the parable, they were vilified religious competitors- but people who still claimed to be Jewish in origin. For their origin, you have to throw in some Game of Thrones-like maneuvers from a conquered tribe, some refugee resettlement from a conquering king, and over generations, there you go, your long lost cousin has become part of an ostracized community. It is perhaps not meaningless that one of the pivotal places in this division was Shiloh; and after also watching the “Grant” miniseries on History channel, I feel perhaps we are reaching another Shiloh moment. An awful, inevitable, necessary reckoning. Born of immoral policies and intransigent politics and leaders. Sure, the immorality is perfectly visible in hindsight, but hindsight still gives us vision. As in the parable, it is a clear call for those in power, those so-called representatives of “law and order”, to recognize the underlying morality, and heal the downtrodden.
Nicely stated. If I may add my oft repeated dismay at “labels” and the misuse of them in political rhetoric. I will make a substitution in your Babel/Babble example.
“…people screaming words like liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat, left-wing, right-wing past each other, each having differing ideas of what these concepts mean.”
This curious tactic has become especially effective with political campaigns. Label are weaponized for effect, allowing the receiver to interpret, for better or worse, what a political label means to them. No standard definition needed. In fact standard definitions would dilute the message to simple rile people up by utterance of a label. We see this in the carefully chosen, overused buzzwords of campaign press releases. We have seen it on the worst days of this blog, relentless name-calling, without context or meaning.
The label shouting actually stops meaningful conversation. Once you are labeled, the other person is done listening. Stop just labeling and shutting down all thought and listening. Time to start conversing in what is important. And yes, you might want to start with your neighbors.