Saving Our Neighbors

As the economic destruction worsens some of us find ourselves wondering what our duties might be toward our neighbors. If people come begging for help what are we to do? Most conservative Christians understand we are to help our immediate families, at least in most cases. We are not necessarily going to take in a relative that is a known child molester, or some obnoxious miscreant. We might not take in a relative we believe will be harshly resistant to our family morals etc.  But, if mom and dad run out of rent money for their place we know we are going to do what it takes.

The questions get harder however when we start thinking about various neighbors, friends from church, and maybe total strangers. The tent cities have not really started in earnest yet. I did see that there is a video now of cops in Florida using box cutters to slash tents in one of them, making the residents ‘homeless’ in a single cruel stroke. It looks to me like Christians will be faced with ethical decisions we have not had to think much about in our generation. So, what exactly do we do?

My daughter-in-law reminded me of some Scripture in Leviticus 25 reading, ‘Now in case a countryman of yours becomes poor and his means with regard to you falter, then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you’. Of course this passage goes on to give greater detail as to how the relationship has to work. The central idea however, is that in the case of a ‘countryman’ we have responsibility to help. I noticed that the passage discusses, ‘like a stranger or sojourner’ causing me to believe the author is writing in reference to people that are known to us in particular, maybe as our first responsibility. We are to treat them at least as well as we would be required for a stranger or sojourner.

Beyond this, we need to understand the larger theological picture. Even though the physical, national Israel, is not ‘us’ (at least not here in the Appalachians) the Remnant, the Children of Promise, the Israel of God, in other words the faithful church, is with us and rightly demands our attention (see Romans 9-10 and other many passages if you find this doctrine unpalatable). The command to Israel is the command to the church.

I love my Christian friends. However, frankly, I would have a difficult time just opening the door and having a big bunch of them just move right in. Maybe that is sin on my part, I do not know. I am thinking about that verse about the ‘countryman’ though and turning over in my head and soul, ‘what does this really mean?’ We may have hard choices ahead. God’s law needs to be our wisdom and light, of that I am certain.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach