To date, I’ve written primarily on the topic of men’s team ministry to the widowed and single parents. But as I’ve related in my last three posts, God has also taken me on a forty year journey of teaching me how to love my neighbors.
So I want to dedicate my next several posts to this topic of loving our neighbors with the hope of encouraging us all to focus on how we can actually do this in practice.
The first lesson I’ve learned is that there is a huge difference between loving our fellow believers and our loving our neighbors. Here’s why:
We share a common worldview with fellow believers. Christians believe in a personal, triune God who is infinite, immortal and holy and who has created all things. We also believe, among other things, that human beings have been created in God’s image, have a soul, and are fallen creatures. We believe that Jesus Christ is God, that he died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead. And we believe that we are saved through faith in Christ’s atoning death. This is not an exhaustive description of our faith. It’s just a general description of what can be described as classic orthodox Christianity. Because we share this common worldview as believers, we have a foundation for our relationships with each other.
Our neighbors, on the other hand, may believe all kinds of things. They could be atheists, pantheists, materialists, Muslim, Mormon, Christian Scientists, and who knows what else. Because we most often do not know our neighbors to begin with, our ignorance of their beliefs serves as a motivation for us to keep our distance. Even when we do meet them, it’s easy to feel like we’re walking on eggshells so as not to offend.
We share a common covenant with fellow believers. The covenant (agreement) Christians have with each other is called the New Covenant. It governs the way we relate to each other. We celebrate this covenant during communion. At its core, the New Covenant tells us that we are to love each other the way Jesus Christ has loved us (John 13:34-35). So the very essence of Christianity is community. As members of the body of Christ, we are expected to relate to each other in love. Community, therefore, is part of our DNA.
But we have no such covenant with our neighbors. There is nothing that exists that gives us a road map of how we are to relate to our neighbors, other than a very general “social contract” that protects us from hurting each other. Our neighbors, defined concretely, are individual units living in homes or apartments on private property. The purpose of a home is to provide privacy, protection and shelter, with an emphasis on privacy. Especially in western culture, where the rights of individuals are asserted to the nth degree, homes do not exist to facilitate loving relationships among neighbors.
We share a common command to love each other with fellow believers.?Love is at the core of every church, or at least it should be. Whatever we do with each other as believers we are to do in love.
But when it comes to our neighbors, the concept of love between them and the person next door is totally foreign. Yes, they know that they are to be “a good neighbor.” But actually loving their neighbors has probably never crossed their mind.
We share an intentional community with fellow believers.?As I said above, community is in our DNA. In fact, God himself is a community of three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That means community is at the foundation of all reality. As believers, we may be good at community or bad at community. But regardless, the yardstick for our existence is how well we do community.
Our neighbors, however, do not think that way. Their yardstick for success is personal fulfillment, often measured by physical possessions and experiences. They may be all alone in their home watching TV and eating pizza. But it’s their home and it’s their pizza and that’s all they care about.
To summarize, when I talk to believers about men’s team ministry to their widowed and single parents in their churches, I’m on a downhill slope. Why? Because we share a common worldview, a common covenant, a common command and a common community. Ministering to their widowed and single parents is simply a logical conclusion of our belief system. The response I often get is, “Oh, well of course we should do that. Why didn’t I think of it?”
But when I think about loving my neighbors, it’s just the opposite. I have very little in common with them. I most often do not share a common worldview. I definitely don’t have a covenant with them. And I have a very different view of how I’m are to relate to them. In fact, it’s tempting to feel comfortable not relating to them at all. Loving my neighbors is not, therefore, a downhill joy ride, but an uphill slog. It can feel very unnatural indeed.
Maybe that’s why it took me forty years to learn how to do it.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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