Loving My Invisible Neighbor
— Monday, May 10th, 2010 —
It’s easy for me to love my neighbor. It’s easy, that is, as long as my neighbor is invisible.
By that I mean to ask, have you noticed how abstract and ethereal so much of our Christian rhetoric is on virtually every topic?
Some Christians rattle on and on about “The Family” while neglecting their kids. Some Christians “fight” for “social justice” by “raising consciousness” about “The Poor” while judging their friends on how trendy their clothes are. Some Christians pontificate about “The Church” while rolling their eyes at the people in their actual congregations. Some Christians are dogmatic about “The Truth” while they’re self-deceived about their own slavery to sin.
I think that’s a tendency for most of us, in some way or another. We affirm all the right things, whether in Christian doctrine or Christian practice, even fight with one another about them. But it’s all just up there in the abstract. These things are “issues,” not persons.
“The Family” never shows up unexpected for Thanksgiving or criticizes your spouse or spills chocolate milk all over your carpet; only real families can do that. “The Poor” don’t show up drunk for the job interview you’ve scheduled or spend the money you’ve given them on lottery tickets or tell you they hate you; only real poor people can do that. “The Church” never votes down my position in a congregational business meeting or puts on an embarrassingly bad Easter musical or asks me to help clean toilets for Vacation Bible School next week; only real churches can do that. “The Truth” never overturns my ideas and expectations; only the revelation of God in Christ does that.
As long as “The Family” or “The Poor” or “The Church” or “The Truth” are abstract concepts, as long as my interaction is as distant as an argument or as policy, then they can be whoever I want them to be.
The Spirit warns us about this. Jesus lit into the Pharisees for “fighting for” the Law of God while ignoring their financial obligations to their parents, all under the guise of their religious advocacy (Mark 7:10-12).
And James, particularly, shows us the difference between “fighting” for a cause, and loving people. “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (James 2:15-16). “Be warmed and filled” is advocacy; “get in here” is love.
If our love is for invisible people, is it any wonder they’re dismissing an incredible gospel?
27 Responses to “Loving My Invisible Neighbor”
Trackbacks
- Abstract Christian Rhetoric – Justin Taylor
- Loving My Invisible Neighbor by Russ Moore | Burtonmemorial.com
- Loving My Invisible Neighbor « New Self – Col 3:10
- “Loving My Invisible Neighbor” « LearningChrist
- Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself « This Little Plot
- What’s real. « Applied Truth
- Easy to Talk About “Being the Church” « College
- Abstract Christian Rhetoric : Talk About Miracles
- iPródigo | Amando meu próximo invisível
- Loving My Invisible Neighbor | Ben Terry
- Latest Links | blog of dan
- Trinity Hinsdale
- Weekly Hit List #18 | :: VFAM.COM ::
- Links I Like
- Treading Grain » Post Topic » Around The Horn – 5.20.10
- On Loving Mankind and Loving People in Particular – Justin Taylor
- We Need to Read Things Like . . . « Grace, Glory, and Gospel Endeavor
- Love your neighbor « J Stewing…cooking up ideas
- Loving My Invisible Neighbor | Jeff Lovell
- Loving a Bore » Evangel | A First Things Blog
- Amando meu próximo invisível « Jovens de Cristo
- Devocional: Amando meu próximo invisível
but i don’t know what else we expect when we make bible study for knowledge, and christianity about agreeing to a particular set of doctrines.
if only bible study were for obedience and christianity about Jesus…
@JamesBrett, Be careful not to go from one extreme to the other. Knowledge and doctrine are good things, the point is to not focus on them to the EXCLUSION of all else.
Check out 2 Peter 1. The whole chapter is great, but verses 5-8 are particularly relevant to this topic:
“…make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Peter is pointing out that if we’re lacking in faith, our fruitfulness will be handicapped. If we’re lacking in affection, our fruitfulness will be handicapped. And if we’re lacking in knowledge, our fruitfulness will be handicapped.
So yes, it’s dangerous to speak about abstract doctrinal principles without putting them into practice. But let’s not make the opposite error of putting things into practice which aren’t based on any doctrinal principle at all.
Dr. Moore,
Thank you for the very convicting article.
1 John 3:18 let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
Reminded me of this from Dostoyevky The Brothers Karamazov
“I love mankind…but I marvel at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love human beings in particular, separately, as individual persons. In my dreams…I would often arrive at fervent plans of devotion to mankind and might very possibly have gone to the Cross for human beings, had that been suddenly required of me, and yet I am unable to spend two days in the same room with someone else…No sooner is that someone else close to me than his personality…hampers my freedom. In the space of a day and a night I am capable of coming to hate even the best of human beings: one because he takes too long over dinner, another because he has a cold and is perpetually blowing his nose… To compensate for this, however, it has always happened that the more I have hated human beings in particular, the more ardent has become my love for mankind in general.”
HT (Jonathan Leeman at 9Marks)
“get in here”
you mean like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=445okeb0PJw
More Christians these days need to read what Dr. Moore posted above and take it into heart (that, especially, includes myself). Enough said.