Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Difficulty of Loving My Neighbor
There remains faith, hope, and love. And the most difficult of these is love.
Loretta and I rented a teardrop trailer and set out to visit three KOA campgrounds on our way to Savannah and back. A week of shared cooking, setup, and keeping out of the rain together was the stuff of building intimacy.
One thing that surprised me in the recreational-vehicle world (our little canned ham bed on wheels is on the microbial end of the travel-trailer food chain) is how insular everyone is. People drive into camp with their mansions on wheels equipped with a sunken tub, a mini-bar, a stocked kitchen, and big screen TVs. The only reason we actually saw people is because recreation technology has not yet perfected the ability walk one’s dog inside, thus forcing them out into this brave new world of social interaction.
But even with our outdoor kitchen and canopy and my mixed success at building roaring campfires, the KOAs were a bit of a fantasy land. Living in a partitioned-off area of lakeside views, with neatly manicured lots, symmetrical fire pits, helpful yellow-shirted staff on golf carts, pristine restrooms with hot showers, and pizza and wood delivery service, gave us a restful time away while maintaining the illusion of roughing it. If Daniel Boone were to show up with a propane refill, he would have captured the ethos and fit right in.
One night, we needed to buy some food, so we left our gated community and entered the city around us. The area felt depressed, with make-do housing and few services. Neighborhoods of houses with dead grass were bookmarked by iron-barred convenience stores and a venturous Chinese to-go restaurant. We drove past the adult supercenter where desperate men go at night and pulled into the Food Lion.
We were from out of town. That much was obvious. Yet the humanity was not that different. Tired moms trying to keep within budget pushed carts carrying children donning intricate African braids. Obese people and two or three with oxygen tanks shuffled through the meat section, wheezing the evidence of a hard lifetime of cheap foods and little time for exercise.
“Hey dawg!” cried a man in a vernacular I would never dare attempt. He hugged affectionately a cheerful, plump woman who retorted “whattsup,” expressing the affection of friends. At the register, I playfully toyed with a little hair-braided girl with a Hello Kitty T-shirt, nervously hoping I wasn’t somehow violating some unwritten rules of race relations. The mother seemed pleased, so I assumed I was safe.
These were a people with lives. People with hopes and dreams and struggles and attachments and addictions and triumphs and disappointments and commitments to God and losing loved ones and faith and doubts. I wouldn’t begin to know how to love these people — to truly will the best for them — because I was outside their neighborhood. I was from an entirely different context, my nose pressed against a window looking in, without the time or ability to know them truly or understand fully what would truly benefit them. We were only passing through for cream and a few vegetables.
Jesus ministered effectively because he was an insider. The incarnation is not only the mystery that God became man but the fact that he lived, experienced, and studied from the inside. He walked among his people for 30 years as a skilled laborer before he opened his mouth to even suggest someone follow him.
Contemporary thinkers of social ministries warn, often in vain, that the church must somehow cure itself of its “soup kitchen” mentality where we swoop in with our cheap food, report excitedly amongst ourselves how this homeless, slightly inebriated man named Indian Moose who prayed tearfully with us (not realizing, of course, that Indian Moose prays tearfully with every group that comes through), and then swoop back to our normal lives and families and co-workers and friends without asking the most basic of questions: “What would really (I mean really) help to get one or two of these people out of the state they are in? How do we truly love them? How do we truly will the good for them? But we can’t really answer these questions because their world remains a foreign land, and we really don’t know them because our team is merely passing through.
Yet there are places where we are incarnated. We live in neighborhoods and endure jobs for years. We live in extended families and connect with friends. We may find ourselves to our own surprise among those in addiction recovery rooms or cancer treatment centers. We lead sports teams, join hiking clubs, or find ourselves getting to know other foster parents or writers or political warriors or pickle ball players or public school parents or people learning to grieve loss.
We resist the notion that this may indeed be our mission field, our corner of the garden we are called to cultivate, the people we are called to relate to and to love. Instead, we valorize those with the newsletters exploding with striking reports of amazing encounters and one-off, epic events before they are swept off by the spirit to their next adventure.
But incarnation implies staying, being one of them, being part of their community, understanding who they are as we understand ourselves, working through annoyances and conflicts, and often remaining for a very, very long time — and sometimes wondering if you and I are doing any good at all. But we stay and we pray and we try because God doesn’t command us to love the world (those faceless abstractions out there somewhere). He commands us “to love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).
After checkout, Loretta and I left the Food Lion and drove back through the darkened streets and through the gates into our manicured KOA camp. The sun settled behind the lake, and we drenched our campfire made of pre-cut wood. We climbed into our teardrop trailer, locked the door to the outside world, and went to sleep.
Published in General
Beautifully written and profound. Gives me something to think about.
Very nice post, from a relative R> newcomer (he joined in 2021).
Wow. I read at first because I have always wondered what the deal was with those little campers I see out there.
But then you described what was essentially my experience of the world, as I tentatively reach out and re-engage.
I don’t think Covid created this strange disconnect. Covid solidified something that has been going on for a while.
“Only Jesus would be crazy enough to suggest that if you want to become the greatest, you should become the least. Only Jesus would declare God’s blessing on the po0r rather than on the rich and would insist that it’s not enough to just love your friends. I just began to wonder if anybody still believed Jesus meant those things he said.”
― Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
Thank you, David, for this; I am convinced the outworking of my faith has become more effective as I have narrowed my focus to loving those on my left and my right.
Just read this waiting for my alarm to go off. Perfect start to my day. Thank you!
Mic drop. @TheScarecrow wins the comments.
That seems like a truly heartfelt question. But it also seems rhetorical. Certainly, there must be quite a few who have no desire to be helped, while a few are searching desperately for a chance. Developing the ability to sort through humanity could take a lifelong commitment.
BTW, I have often wondered how people who, as a group, tend to be senior citizens, can manage to safely and competently drive those large rigs. Did you have any difficulty with yours? Did you share the driving responsibilities?
Jesus was a carpenter and carpentry requires a good amount of skill. I think he should be referred to as a skilled laborer.
Fair enough. Thanks. I would have fixed but it will boot off the main feed.
They say that plows he made were still in use two hundred years later.
For serious? That would be a master carpenter wouldn’t it?
It may be true, but it is certainly the stuff of legend. Either way, the moral is that the skill and dedication and care he put into making them was exceptional, with an exceptional outcome.
Yes. I realized something not too long ago. When Jesus was about to heal the man at the pool He first asked if the man actually wanted to be healed. Unexpected question. I’ve known a few that didn’t want to be physically healed because it would interrupt their disability benefits. I guess there are all kinds of reasons to refuse help. In some cases, perhaps they’re doing alright and content and just don’t need it.
Great post, as a local the Food Lion is my go to grocery store. Although its proper name is the Food Kitty if you want to blend in. There is a Kroger (Kay-Roger) across the street for the more affluent.