Now let me get this straight Jesus. You tell me I’m supposed to help my neighbor. My question to you is: which neighbor? You see my Lord, I don’t know any one of my neighbors. I have made it a point in fact to not associate with them. After all this is the United States of America. We have a right for free association or non-association depending on which we choose. So, I have chosen to not associate with the people immediately to my left or right or even those across the street. I don’t know any of them. That suits me just fine. when I ask who is my neighbor, I genuinely don’t know.
This is the scenario I played out in my return from Kenya. In Kenya you could live 5 miles or more from your nearest neighbor. That would be a walk over rugged terrain. Sometimes it would be mountainous, full of puddles of muddy water and even watching out for animals some hunting, others being hunted. That would not however prevent one from knowing their nearest neighbor. Not only would you know your neighbor, you’d know their spouses, their children’s name, the important days in their lives and even when they were sick or giving birth. Being neighborly in Kenya as probably in most Africa was just normal. No one found it hard to know their neighbor.
We have become so accustomed in this country to not acknowledging our immediate neighbors who live several yards from our front door that it is easy to ignore those who don’t look like us, talk like us, eat like us or even celebrate like us. This lack of sensitivity makes it very easy to ignore and even disparage others from another community or country.
This insensitivity is manifest as we watch people of another culture, tradition and color suffer because after all if I can ignore my next door neighbor, I don’t even have to consider these other people as human.
That is why it is so easy for even those who claim to follow Jesus Christ to ignore the suffering of others. After all they are not my neighbors. They may be in distress, in great need and suffering harm. But because they are not my neighbor I don’t have to helped them anymore than I help those who live in my immediate environment.
So, Jesus when I come to you with the question who is my neighbor, I seriously mean it. And if that person is in need of something I can genuinely reply that because I don’t know them, I don’t need to help, assist, aid, comfort or even acknowledge their existence. If I can treat the person right next door to me, as if they don’t exist, it is much easier to do so for those whom I see on television screen or read about in the newspaper as non-entities. They are merely background noise to the things that are important to me. They are distractions from my easy carefree lifestyle. It makes me uncomfortable to pretend to even notice them.
If they are hurting let them find a way out of their circumstance. Let someone else do the
uncomfortable, and inconvenient things of providing them with what may seem necessary.
As for me, I’m gonna take care of those within my 4 walls. If needs be, I will let my immediate neighbors know my first name. Afterall, they are my real neighbors. By the way Jesus, do you live around here?
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:40
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor? Luke 10:25