Our neighbors in Haiti?

by David Henson

In the film The Incredibles, a young superhero bemoans the fact that he must hide his superior speed when he's with his peers—he believes it’s the one thing that makes him special. His mother, also endowed with supernatural abilities, tries to placate him: “Everyone’s special, Dash.”

To which Dash mumbles, “That’s just another way of saying no one is.”

Sometimes I wonder if a similar line of reasoning runs through much of Christianity’s understanding of Jesus’ command to love one’s neighbor. Until recently, I viewed all of humanity as my neighbor, from the poorest of the poor in the developing world to the richest of the rich on Wall Street. But lately I’ve been wondering whether we’ve so globalized and overspiritualized this commandment that it’s become meaningless. Everyone’s my neighbor? That’s just another way of saying no one is.

More to the point, I suspect that many of us, myself included, substitute this globalized, aloof neighbor love for actual self-sacrificial love in our lives. I cheer for the right international causes—Amnesty International, the Red Cross and so on—and dutifully make out my checks. When tragedy befalls a nation, such as the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti, I'm quick to make a donation.

But too many times these donations rise from a sappy place of sentimentality rather than a sacred space of altruism. I wonder how many of us, if we are brutally honest, give not to help those in need so much as to make ourselves feel better in the face of our powerlessness to end the world’s injustice.

I for one find it easiest to give to faraway causes and tragedies, because it requires so little of me. I rush to help when tragedy befalls my neighbors in Haiti, but I can’t be bothered to help fight child hunger in my home state—after all, the latter might cost me something more than money. I love "my neighbors in Haiti" so I don't have to love my actual neighbors. Yet each street, city, state and region has more than enough human tragedy that needs to be confronted with compassion.

I recently moved to Texas, where I was struck that a state that so heavily identifies with Christianity—where churches outnumber, well, everything—can have such irresponsible rates of childhood hunger and poverty. These are my neighbors living in the midst of human tragedy, and it is a tragedy I can touch, a tragedy that I can let touch me and change me. It’s a tragedy that I can stand in solidarity against with my neighbors.

It may be time to start loving my neighbors in my very own neighborhood. Perhaps then the next time Jesus asks who my neighbor is, I can answer with a name.

David Henson is a stay-at-home parent and heretical blogger (part of the CCblogs network) who learned how to ask oddball questions from his chatterbox two-year-old.