difficult truth to contend with as, most often, those of us with compassionate hearts want to fix everyone we meet. Sometimes our neighbors simply do not want to be fixed.
Early in my ministry with refugees, I was overeager to tell our refugee friends everything I knew about how to do things here in the United States. Little by little, I learned that some of them wanted to experience and learn about life in America on their own terms. It often costs them deeply, but it is their choice. It breaks my heart to see our refugee families in trouble. I know that if they had just listened to what I shared with them, they would not be going through such difficult times. But I have come to accept that my “neighbor” is with all their gifts, graces, good-heartedness, and sins, as any other human being. I must honor that.
Several years ago, I met a persecuted Christian family from Iran. Their circumstances forced them to flee to Turkey, where they lived for a few years waiting on their refugee cases to be processed. The family had a son who suffered from diabetes. I met the family as soon as they arrived in the United States. As it turned out, we were from the same hometown in Iran, so it was a very sweet meeting. Gateway of Grace began serving the family and the nineteen-year-old son. We helped him get a job at a restaurant. He had to be at work very early in the morning. His commute was about ninety minutes, changing a few trains in the dark hours of the morning. I was concerned about him. Although he was a smart person and a hard worker, he had limited English and even less understanding about what it took to thrive in the United States. We raised money through the ministry and purchased a car for him. He was overjoyed. We asked him to continue at his job that had potential for promotion, and to keep preparing to attend college. The car was a tool that empowered him to do both at the same time.
After a few months, he met other young Iranians who influenced him in unproductive ways. He quit his job, borrowed money to buy and sell cars, lost money on a car, and quit college. Six years later, he does not have a stable job and has not finished college. Early on, we met with him and counseled him, but we realized that, regardless of the wisdom we shared, he was going to make his own decisions about life. It was painful to watch him inflict wound after wound upon his life. We continue to pray for him, and are committed to providing the same wise counsel should he want it.
A Loaded Response
Jesus’s parable provides a profound response to the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus was intentional about saying, “A man was going down from Jericho.” He didn’t identify whether he was an Israelite, a good person, a family man, an adulterer, religiously observant, or an unbeliever. The man could have been anyone for the sake of neighborliness, it did not matter. He then identified those passing by the man, which included a Levite, a priest, and a Samaritan. Religiously, the Levite and the priest were held in the highest regard and the Samaritan was the lowest; the Samaritan was the outcast. The Levite and the priest claimed righteousness, were faithful to religious practices, prayed publicly, performed the sacrificial ceremonies, and attended synagogue regularly. Jesus finished telling the parable and asked. “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
Notice the response of the lawyer. He was not able to bring himself to say that the Samaritan was the neighbor, a demonstration of the disregard the lawyer had for the Samaritan. Instead he said, “The one who showed him mercy” (Luke 10:37). Jesus told the lawyer to go and do as the Samaritan had done, which was a slap in the face of the religious authorities who considered themselves holy and righteous. Jesus said it was better to be a Samaritan who was a neighbor than a priest or a Levite who was not. Can you imagine how shocking these words of Jesus must have been? Jesus turned things upside down.
No More Scapegoating
Looking for a scapegoat is a natural part of our sinful psychological makeup. As a matter of fact, psychologists have determined that almost as soon as children can express themselves verbally, they know how to pass the blame. The behavior follows us into adulthood. The motivations for scapegoating are basically the same for adults as they for children: we do not want to feel the guilt of our sin, acknowledge responsibility, or deal with consequences of actions or inactions. Neither is scapegoating a contemporary problem only. From the first family to our family, we find people who choose the convenience of passing on the blame. Of course, what we call scapegoating has biblical roots that at its core had quite a different origin from how it is used in societies today. Let us examine Leviticus 16:7–10 (NIV):
Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting. He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat. Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord and sacrifice it for a sin offering. But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it into the wilderness as a scapegoat.
The last part of the passage about sending the goat into the wilderness is particularly significant because we, in our daily lives, go through the same process. While God’s scapegoat had a holy purpose, ours is selfish.
We usually do not think about how our scapegoating impacts others. Instead of asking how he could serve the neighbor, the lawyer asked Jesus what qualifications one should have in order to be considered a neighbor. In other words, the lawyer’s question was intended to find reasons that would disqualify people from being served. Jesus, knowing the heart of the lawyer and the motive for his question, pointed out that neighborliness was not about who “those people” were, but who we are. As Christians, our lives must be marked by attitudes and actions that demonstrate the presence of God. We know and embrace the command to love God, but when loving God moves into the realm of loving our neighbor, we become like the lawyer in the story and look for disqualifying reasons to care for someone.
I am a frequent speaker at churches, where I share my testimony of coming to faith and creating a ministry that mobilizes the Church to reach refugees. I am often given a question-and-answer time at the end. It is rare to finish a question-and-answer session without at least one or two questions that are similar to the question the lawyer asked Jesus, aiming to disqualify someone as a neighbor. Remember, Jesus sets no qualification for who our neighbor is. Anyone can be a neighbor. God provides the example of how to love our neighbor. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
Take a moment for self-examination. Do you ever or often try to qualify people in order to be neighborly to them? In what ways do you find a scapegoat when it comes to loving your neighbor? How do you demonstrate love for the neighbor who simply can be a challenge to love?
By now, we have established that the Bible provides empirical evidence that loving God and loving our neighbor are inextricably connected. What needs deeper exploration is the meaning of love. With all due respect to legendary and award-winning singer Tina Turner, her song “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” was wrong on so many levels. Love is definitely not a second-hand emotion. Love does not break hearts; it mends them. And love is certainly not an old-fashioned notion. But Ms. Turner is not the only one getting it wrong when it comes to understanding and using the word love. The Church also shares in the guilt.
Saying “I love you” has become one of the many Christian expressions we are expected to share with one another. We say it to people with no real evidence or demonstration that we really love them. Other than a two-minute interaction in the atrium or a greeting in Sunday school, what evidence is there, in most cases, that we love our brothers and sisters in Christ or that they love us? When we ask about their week or their family, many of us do not ask with the desire to hear about how much their child is messing up in college or how they are struggling with putting her parents in a nursing home. We care, but just not to a point of altering our day. At best, we ask “How are you?” as a conversation filler so that we feel good about acknowledging their presence and to show all is good between us.
I will answer Tina Turner’s question, “What’s love got