What is a really good neighbor?

Caring for strangers is what Middleton is all about—thus our name, “The Good Neighbor City.” Caring for strangers is rooted in the ancient story of “The Good Samaritan.” But this story, our city and neighborliness, comes with a gut-wrenching twist.

As told in the Gospel of Luke, chapter ten, Jesus is confronted by a do-gooder who is feeling pretty smug about his chances of making it in this life and in the hereafter. When asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life,” Jesus challenges him to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

That is not the end of the matter, however. Correctly loving yourself, for the conscientious believer, law-keeper, and do-gooder, still begs the follow-up question: “Who is my neighbor?”

The answer that Jesus gives—about the hated Samaritan, a community outcast who extends tangible mercy to a stranger, even an enemy—stands in sharp contrast to the religious types who cross the street to avoid any cost or inconvenience of getting involved.

That story also goes to the root of problems currently facing MOM and our larger society: What to do about the undocumented worker, illegal immigrant, or (in Jesus’ words) “neighbor” in our midst? What will resolve the civil war between Sunni and Shiite, two “neighbors” in Iraq? What to do on the Israel-Lebanon border, where one “neighbor” would kill the other? What of the local affordable housing debate, where keeping high property values seems to trump being “good neighbors”?

Being a good neighbor means taking that call in the middle of the night to care for a family friend who has just lost a loved one. You do so without regard to ethnic affiliation, race, religion, gender or family status.

At MOM, being a good neighbor also means extending mercy and second chances to redeem bad credit or checkered rental history. It means helping the 89-year-old lady with dementia, who wanders into our fair city, to get back home to her husband in Minnesota. Many of us do so without regard to cost or convenience. The compassion of Christ, which motivates so many of us at MOM, compels us to do so unconditionally.

Our “neighbors” include 70 Russian Jews relocated into our service area by Jewish Social Services. Another neighbor is the Hispanic lady seeking a hiding place, away from an abusive partner. Yet another neighbor is the Muslim family relocated here after the giant Tsunami hit Indonesia. On your behalf, MOM is also being “good” to a growing number of African-American neighbors in a once mostly white community.

Barbara Hensley (in an article published July 31, 2006, by CommonDreams.org) takes a different tack when confronted with this question of “Who is my neighbor?” She presses the point of terrorism close to home, in order to open our eyes and our hearts to the tragedy that may be developing right next door, where the family may be experiencing some form of terrorism.

Hensley suggests that “terrorism” is not only bombs dropping on houses many thousands of miles away, but is also “having your water shut off, no food in the house, no roof over your head, the fear of losing your healthcare when you are laid off. They get up everyday and go to work like the rest of us. They bring home a paycheck that has not increased for ten or more years while the cost of living has soared. Maybe some are making that miserable excuse called a minimum wage that does not provide for a respectable living in these times. Maybe it is due to failing health or a catastrophic accident that their income has suffered. For whatever reasons, none of which matters here, they are unable to meet the living standards set by their communities. Their homes are falling apart, there is no money, and they are living in despair.”

By that definition, we at MOM are acquainted with many who live in constant terror and despair. Yet if we know of our neighbor’s condition—and do nothing—that is even more tragic, says Ron Hutchcraft, renown radio minister. In a broadcast dated July 31, he recounts a story that came from not-so-good neighbors on Mount Everest not long ago:

“A British mountaineer became desperate for oxygen on his descent from that peak that is really a legendary mountain. Ultimately, he collapsed along a well-traveled route to the summit. He was dying. And more than forty climbers are thought to have seen him as he lay dying, and they passed him by. He died there of oxygen deficiency. He didn't have to die. The official cause of death was probably something like ‘oxygen deficiency.’ But apparently there was another cause of that climber’s death—human indifference: people too busy climbing their mountain to stop and help someone who was dying.”

Tragically, that happens more often than meets the eye, or makes the papers, or comes through the front door at MOM. The ones dying of human indifference may be people we see every day.

Being a good neighbor surely means loving yourself, giving of yourself, embracing diversity. But it also means not passing by on “the other side,” but doing something about whatever needs you see. So I urge you: Check on the welfare of the family next door that has not come out in days. Check out the new neighbor that just moved in down the street, or down the hall. Look out for the family of the new kid at school or work. Then, if need be, connect them with resources that offer help and hope.

Connecting our neighbors for good—that is what being a part of MOM and this city is all about.

© 2005 Middleton Outreach Ministry

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