Just asking (31): Who’s my neighbour?
It never dawned on me that could be overlooked.
And it could pivot to a completely different outlook.
Particularly if one reads the older version of the Chinese Union Bible.
I’ve often memorised the Greatest Commandment as love God and “love people (人) as myself”.
In English, there’s no room for confusion: your neighbour, not “humankind”.
Though it’s long been said that Israelites always struggled to define it as Israelites only.
Let’s leave it to exegetes to sweat over it.
The locational reference makes a huge difference.
However, in today’s ideological world, even the English specificity is lost in a sea of boundless locales.
Today, Bible believers, or even non-believers, will readily champion for the good of people never met overseas, over above neighbours in their own block whom they see everyday.
In an article published this April, we’ve seen HK Chinese University theological professor verbally and unequivocally classified the US President Donald Trump as unrighteousness.
Yet, the same intelligent academic ignored the authority in his own town since 2019, especially November when his own campus was shelled and fell.
On the other hand, Gaza, Palestinians, Algerians, and Ukrainians, deserve our support much more than those poor and unjustly remanded Hong Kong people nearby.
Locale is lost conveniently.
It’s acceptable to hate nasty neighbours.
To be estranged with family.
To never help a colleague on the same floor.
Even to avoid confronting them.
As long as a substitute could be found.
But someone preached a probing sermon the other day and the final several minutes really drove the teaching home: https://youtu.be/aELP-UhckZ0?si=iLyQCca4OYnHea7G
(Sermon begins @ 22:00)
It asks for pondering on Acts 17:26-27: From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us (New International Version).
Just consider where you are and learn that God has a plan for His people at the place at the time to love the “neighbour”.
Isn’t it simple?
No theological acrobatics?
Stand up to your local unjust authority or to the Trump in Washington DC?
Care for the persons in your next apartment or some GoFundMe in North Carolina USA?
Just asking.