Who Is My "Neighbor" in a Globally-Connected World?

Kony '12. It seemed like a good idea at the time. For a day, I was inspired that perhaps change can happen if enough people want it to happen. I believed that we could stop a man who has been kidnapping, raping, murdering, and pillaging his way through Uganda, Congo, Central African Republic, and South Sudan for a quarter century by raising such a large global outcry that he would be captured and things would be magically fixed. I was ready to buy the kit, ready to spread the word, ready to join the rallies, ready to help create the groundswell to sweep Joseph Kony out of power and into prison.

Then, within a couple days, as is often the case, cooler heads prevailed on me. These articles raise the issues more eloquently and poignantly than I can, so I'll let the authors speak for themselves. I'll just say this, creating awareness will not magically bring justice, and it is the height of pride to believe that North Americans can simply throw $30 apiece at a complex issue and expect it will go away. We create more problems than we solve when we buy into the "white savior" swooping in to solve the world's problems overnight myth.

But far from letting me off the hook, this whole chain of events has forced me to do some deep soul-searching. Why did I care about this issue in the first place? Did I choose it because it was expedient, just a couple clicks here and there necessary? Did the beauty and artistry of the movie manipulate my emotions and bypass my judgement? Did I choose it because it was a sexy issue that would make me look good if I supported it? Did I choose it out of a sense of good old-fashioned Christian guilt? Did I choose it because of my personal battle with the need to "do" and not just "be"? Did I even really care about the people involved or was it just an issue to me?

The truth is, I'm not ready to invest in Uganda long-term. I have no plans to continually give to the cause of rebuilding Uganda. I'm not going to fly over there and get to know the people for whom this is a daily reality and not just the flavor of the week. I saw a movie, was moved, and in effect, pressed the "like" button on the issue. Because all I could promise was solidarity. I couldn't promise commitment.

And this is the constant dilemma of our globally-connected society. If we cared about every issue we're aware of enough to throw our weight behind it we'd soon succumb to compassion fatigue. We were not designed to bear the weight of the world like Atlas. And yet, there is a greater danger in the polar opposite: not throwing our weight behind any issue. Apathy is the imitation of death, and the ultimate surrender. So how do we decide what is worth spending our time, energy, money, blood, sweat, tears, gifts, and talents on?

I think one way to get at the answer to this question is to rephrase it and ask, who is my neighbor? You'll recognize that this very question was asked of Jesus in Luke 10. He responded with the parable of the good Samaritan:

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “‘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.’”
28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

There are a lot of things I could say about this passage, but allow me to make three observations related to this discussion:

1. Jesus always prioritizes the person who is immediately in need in front of us.

Call it triage if that's helpful. If donating to a cause will take something away from someone in more immediate need, you should give it to the person more immediately in need whom you can most directly help at that time (especially if that person is in your physical vicinity). This may mean that you choose to buy groceries for a neighbor who can't afford them (as someone in my church recently did for a couple struggling young men) rather than donating to an overseas ministry like Invisible Children (if you can afford to do both, then more power to you).

Here's a practical negative example from my own life. As I was driving to my church to feed the homeless in Chicago with a group of volunteers, I passed a family broken down on the side of the road about a block from my house. I was running late, so I didn't stop. I think it's pretty clear that I should have stopped and risked missing the van to Chicago.

2. Jesus expects us to do the work to understand the nature of the need and let that shape our response.

A lot of the criticism being leveled at the Kony '12 movement is that it misunderstands the nature of the need. Perhaps the money being used to raise awareness and fund making posters and movies and bracelets would be better spent by the people on the ground in Uganda who are rebuilding the country. Furthermore, many feel that military action against Kony would only lead to more bloodshed (as it has in the past), and that there are other, better ways to bring peace and renewal to the region.

For another example, it's easy to throw money at a homeless person, but often that is not what that person needs. That doesn't mean you pass up the homeless person and do nothing. Perhaps sharing a meal with them, or buying them a public transportation pass, or simply hearing their story and letting them know you value them as a human created in the image of God is more in line with what they need.

3. Jesus expects us to see it to completion.

"Completion" will mean different things in different contexts. Sometimes, you will be able to solve the problem completely, such as when you help someone change a flat tire. Sometimes, "completion" will mean handing someone or something off to someone who can better help and then following-up later. Sometimes it will mean committing yourself to pursuing a solution to an issue long-term, and perhaps even moving to be closer to the center of the issue.

There is a place for donating money to causes, but we are responsible to know where our money is going and carefully select those who will steward it well (after all we are only stewards of it ourselves). There are several organizations that can help you choose the right one. If you'll allow me to indulge in some self-promotion for a moment, Christianity Today published a couple helpful articles on the Church's role in fighting global poverty and the effectiveness of popular methods that are generating lots of helpful responses.

So, who is my neighbor?

I want to humbly submit that our primary responsibility is to the neighbors God puts in our way daily. That may be the neighbor we regularly see or the neighbor we only see once in a lifetime. We have to be ready to drop everything to help when the need arises.

Our secondary responsibility is to the neighbors we "choose." These are the tricky ones. These are the ones we may never see face-to-face: the sponsored children, the orphans, the refugees, the political prisoners, the persecuted minorities, the survivors of war, the hungry, the poor, the foreigners. They are tricky because they can become faceless masses or simply remain a face on a postcard. They can be a source of smug satisfaction (if we do something for them) or vague, relentless guilt (if we don't). The temptation is to simply throw money at them to solve their problems. But they are more than their problems. They are people. If we decide to help them, we must commit to understand their situation. We cannot know our neighbors' needs unless we know our neighbors.

All this to say, if you decide to give to Invisible Children and support the cause of Kony '12, do it with my blessing. It would be wonderful to see a man with a shockingly warped mind who is guilty of such heart-wrenching atrocities be brought to justice. But if you do give, please be sure you know why you are doing it. Bringing Kony to justice will not be as quick, simple, and violence-free as the movie implies. We see but through a glass darkly, and do not know the full repercussions of bringing down a warlord (see Iraq/Afghanistan). Ultimately vengeance and justice are in the Lord's hands. We are simply called to love.

Why Young Men Aren’t Manning Up

Where have the good men gone? Chances are you’ve counseled a frustrated young single woman in your church who has asked you this question. Or perhaps you’ve asked it yourself. This question is the catalyst for Kay Hymowitz’s book Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys, an indepth analysis of the state of the average middle-class American male in his twenties. ...

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Rage Against God Book Review

Here's a book review I did in March 2011 of Peter Hitchens' The Rage Against God: http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/webexclusives/2011/march/rageagainst.html

The Rapper in Rehab



Here's another March 2011 flashback; an interview I did with Christian Hip-hop artist, Lecrae: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/music/interviews/2011/rapperrehab-march15.html

About an Orange

Quarters

When I was a young boy, one of my favorite things to do when my family went to Wal-Mart was to "play" the arcade games near the entrance. As the demo version played on the screen, I would press buttons and swivel the joy stick, pretending that I was playing the game on the screen.

Sometimes I would get really lucky and someone would insert a couple quarters and start actually playing the game. I would stand there looking over his shoulder (at that time it was invariably a "he"), and as the action on the screen got more and more intense, I would begin to bounce up and down with excitement. Who knows what the people around me thought of this, but I didn't care. I was totally absorbed in what was happening on the screen.

I remember a few times when my dad took me to a real arcade; the ones with aisles and aisles of arcade games. The rooms were filled with seizure-inducing flashing lights and a garbled cacophony of music and sound effects. Each console seemed to compete for your quarters like a street vender in an Arabian bazar, playing its music loudly and calling out to you as it hawked its most engaging game footage to lure you in to play it.

I'd follow my dad over to the change machine and watch him feed paper money into it. The bill would disappear into the bowels of the machine, some hidden gears would whir, and magically, change would spill out into the tray below. It felt like winning the jackpot in slots. With change in hand, he and I would set off together to find a game. At that time, I was a huge fan of any game starring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When we found a Turtles game, my dad would reach down and drop a few quarters into the slots below as the game chirped its acknowledgement of the money. With much anticipation, we poised our hands over the "start" buttons and together we pressed them. And the adventure began.

After a few minutes, one of our characters would die, and dad, without a word, would feed more quarters into the machine and the character would be resurrected to battle some more. I think this memory stands out in my mind because it was one of my first realizations of the prodigal nature of my dad's giving toward me.

Now let me quick clear something up for those who, like me, thought prodigal meant "runaway" or "lost," as in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Tim Keller, in his book Prodigal God points out that prodigal actually means "profuse or wasteful expenditure," and the parable is talking about the wasteful spending of the son, not the fact that he was lost and wandering. But Keller points out that prodigal can also be applied to the father's freely lavish and extravagent giving in providing a feast for his son when he returned.

Back to the arcade. To my young mind, quarters were a lot of money. My dad was relatively frugal and normally didn't throw money around. Now he had a pile of quarters that he got from his paper money, and he was spending them all on me. Every time I let my character die, he just put more money into the machine to bring him back to life. He didn't tell me to be more careful. He didn't make me feel like I was wasting his money. He just let me keep playing with his quarters. I could tangibly see his quarters disappearing, yet he didn't care. He just wanted me to have fun playing.

I think you probably see where I'm going with this. We serve a prodigal God. Every breath we take, every new day we are alive, every wonderful experience we have, every kiss from a puppy's tiny tongue, every delicious bite of rich chocolate cake, every burst of laughter that leaves you gasping for breath and shedding tears, every clear starry night, is like another quarter dropped into the machine. Our God continues to feed quarters into the arcade game despite the fact that He could play the game better Himself. It's an incredibly prodigal act if you reflect on it. Every moment is a vote of confidence from God that says your life, your pleasure is worth His time—more than that—is worth surrendering His very life.

Spend some time with God. He's got a pile of quarters with your name on them.

"In Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever." (Ps. 16:11, NASB) 

Sci-Fi and the Technocratic Impulse

Here is a response I wrote for MereOrthodoxy, responding to the first chapter in Matthew Anderson's book Earthen Vessels:
http://www.mereorthodoxy.com/ev-symposium-sci-fi-technocratic-impulse-ch-1/

10 Ways the Modern World Isolates Young Adults (In No Particular Order)

1) Birth Control – Children have become a choice to be made instead of a blessing to welcome with a humble openness. An emphasis is placed on the couple over the family. Sex is divorced from procreation so that it becomes about maximizing personal pleasure.

2) Delayed Marriage – Marriage takes on more gravity because it’s a choice that needs to be made and there is a fear of making the wrong choice. Then no-fault divorce becomes the white out for a bad choice and is the nagging exit clause that hangs around in the back of both partners' minds for as long as they are together. Men and women are interchangeable to the degree that any type of role distinction is gone. Trial marriage and serial monogamy has become an acceptable norm.

3) Social Media – Information is wide-open so that the intimacy created by shared private information is gone. We are constantly connected and eternally present to anyone who has our contact information, so that face-to-face communication loses its urgency. Twitter encourages short bursts of impulsive aphorisms over carefully thought-through responses. Communication is more and more depersonalized and egocentric.

4) White Noise – There is little to no reprieve from media so there is little opportunity to change patterns and habits and to seek deeper intimacy with friends and family. We have little time to process emotions and thoughts about the media we are consuming. Time spent talking with people is typically time spent away from media and entertainment and we have shorter attention spans and lesser tolerance for silence and time spent simply being in the presence of another.

5) Schedule Segmentation – We continually divide our daily lives into smaller and smaller segments in order to fit more and more activity. This gives us the illusion of productivity, but mostly it just adds to our stress and fatigue. There is no rest from activities because our lives are scheduled down to 15 minute segments. No one shares the same schedule and there is no flex time built in to accomodate chance meetings or conversations that extend past their alloted time. So, no one is sharing life.

6) Specialization - Jobs are becoming more and more specialized so that no one has the same work experiences, and we lose sight of how our particular job fits into the whole of society.

7) Independance - The philosophy of suburban life is built around reducing necessary interactions with and dependance on other humans. Many of our amenities are self-initiated and sustained or completely automated: self-check outs, self-serve stations, self-driving vs. public transit, single-person apartments, grocery stores with endless options, etc.

8) Customization - We all have a personalized radio station, playlist, netflix cue, DVR folder, facebook page, twitter, RSS feed, etc. which we prefer to what everyone else is watching or listening to. Conversation topics are drying up as we retreat into our own personalized niche worlds.

9) Individualism - We are training ourselves to expect instant gratification and get frustrated and impatient when things don't go our way. We expect everything to work out for us all the time and overreact when it doesn't. When we are not satisfied with something we have ample forums to vent through and endless options for upgrades.

10) Pain avoidance/pleasure indulgence - Why risk hurt, pain, disappointment when your every need is satisfied? Conviction has been muted in favor of tolerance. No war is worth fighting, no sacrifice is worth making. Live and let live is the motto of the day. We are no longer seriously striving together to make a better world, though we talk about it a lot.

The Beginning

The first article I had published in Christianity Today has made its way onto the our SemGrad site. Check it out:

http://seminarygradschool.com/article/Smuggling-Theology-into-Banking