“Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, “You tell me why we allow this to happen.  You are my body, my hands, my feet.” –Shane Claiborne (www.thesimpleway.com)

“The (Good Samaritan) story does not teach that we can have eternal life just by loving our neighbor.  We cannot get away with that nice legalism either.  The issue of our posture toward God still has to be taken into account.  But in God’s order nothing can substitute for loving people. And we define who our neighbor is by our love.  We make a neighbor of someone by caring from him or her.

So we don’t first define a class of people who will be our neighbor and then select only them as the subjects of our love – leaving the rest to lie where they fall.  Jesus deftly rejects the question “Who is my neighbor?” and substitutes the only question really relevant here: “To whom will I be a neighbor?”  And he knows that we can only this question case by case as we go through our days.  In the morning we cannot yet know who our neighbor will be that day.  The condition of our hearts will determine who along our path turns out to be our neighbor, and our faith in God will largely determine whom we have strength enough to make our neighbor.”

-Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (p. 111)

Let’s be honest – loving people – is probably the most simple, yet difficult day-to-day call on our hearts and lives.  Claiborne’s question is insightful into the greatness of our responsibility in loving and caring for others in our world.  Willard writes with great simplicity and insight, “Jesus deftly rejects the question ‘Who is my neighbor?’ and substitutes the only question really relevant here ‘To whom will I be a neighbor?’….In the morning we cannot yet know who our neighbor will be that day.”

Doesn’t Willard’s interpretation make you more uncomfortable than just the simple phrase, “love people”?  I do not know about you, but his understanding leaves me with far less knowledge and control than I am comfortable with.  I want to know who I will have to serve and love and give to.  Jesus says, “You want control and power; I want you to reject those and choose love.”  (As I have mentioned in a previous post) when we fear and feel threatened by possible intimacy with someone (and let’s be honest, loving someone requires GREAT intimacy), then we are going to be tempted with the potential to grasp for power instead of opening ourselves up to that person and loving them.

Much of what stands in the way between us experiencing true community with others and between us and the people God has called us to serve and give our lives for is our own fear and desire for control.  Let’s be honest – we often deceive ourselves and others with reasoning that is far less spiritual than we would like to admit.  And we loathe the idea of publicly confessing the truth of how we interact with one another, but coming to terms with what our reality looks like is often the first step to beginning to move in a new direction.