A thought from a book

I found this really old blog that i had written back in July. I feel it is still applicable so here it is.

I am reading the book More Than Equals by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice. This book focuses a lot on racial reconciliation, specifically between blacks and whites and how Christianity in American has been affected by the issue of race. It frequently states how the issue is a “we’ve come so far” or a “not yet” issue. Either praised for its comparison to the past or the realization that the gorge has yet to be crossed, in that we still have such a long way to go in such examples as “why are most institutions, for example the church, still predominately separated into black or white communities?”

One of the focal points of the book is the backbone to the Christian faith, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” The following section is passage from the book: (p 65-66)

“but in this story [the story of the Good Samaritan] Jesus says that our neighbors are especially those people who ignore us, those people who separate themselves from us, those people who are afraid of us, those people we have the most difficulty loving and those people we feel don’t love us.”

“And who is my neighbor?”

“The question has much to say about the priority we place on loving people who are different from ourselves, especially as it relates to our eternal future. It doesn’t take much imagination for each of us to figure out who Jesus would use as an example of ‘neighbor’ in our towns and cities.
For an Israeli, how about a Palestinian?
For an Arab, how about a Jew?
For a rich white, how about a black welfare mother?
For a poor white, how about a middle-class black who go where he is through affirmative action?
For a black male, how about a white male-better yet, a pickup-driving, gunrack-toting, tobacco-chewing, baseball-cap-wearing white man who still refers to a black man as ‘boy’?
For a feminist, how about an insensitive, domineering male chauvinist?
For a suburban white family, how about the new black or Hispanic family that moved in down the street?
For all of us, how about the unmotivated, undisciplined, uneducated poor? Or an AIDS victim who contracted HIV not through a transfusion but through homosexual activity or intravenous drug use?”

I found this whole section very enlightening as I was reading through. I originally thought about the children and the people I minister here in El Salvador, those are the ones that I consider my neighbor. The ones abandoned and fallen to the wayside. But then I thought again, about how easy it was for me to love those people and how much I enjoy helping and serving and building relation with them. Then I decided to honestly try to answer the question, and the response that I came up with was those perceived “snotty rich kids that have never had to work a day in their lives” kids.
Who would Jesus use as the neighbor if he were speaking to you?