the tindog coffeehouse

Sunday morning our youth pastor preached in “big church” on the parable of the Good Samaritan, about how we as Christians should be pouring out Christ’s love to the people around us, to a world that is lost and broken and desperate. I sat and listened intently, agreeing with everything he said and telling myself I would be the kind of neighbor that Jesus described.

And then I went straight home and failed miserably.

That evening I was mowing the yard and honestly wasn’t in a very good mood. I didn’t want to be out there, and I was tired and sweaty and cranky. And above the roar of the lawnmower, I could hear my next-door neighbor’s rap music blaring from his open garage. So I walked over to him and gently asked him if he wouldn’t mind please turning it down a bit. Then I shook his hand and said thanks and prayed for his salvation.

OK, not really. In reality, I stormed over and yelled sarcastically, “Do you have to have your music so loud?”

Smooth, right?

I completely blew it, and I immediately felt like a horrible, horrible person because of it. And the thing is, it’s not like my wife and I even have a very good reputation among our neighbors to begin with. There are three families next to us whose favorite pastime is to stand around outside at all hours of the night getting drunk and cussing loud enough for the people four blocks over to hear. That and getting into fights and shooting off fireworks and doing anything else to generally disturb the peace — including playing really loud gangsta rap in their garage on a Sunday night.

And because they know we don’t like it, they don’t like us. They refer to my wife as “The Bitch”, and Lord only knows what they call me. Of course, it probably doesn’t help that we’ve confronted them about their antics before or that we’ve had to call the cops on them a couple of times when their behavior went too far.

Yeah, it’s a veritable lovefest around our neighborhood.

The truth is, though, I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to be “that guy”, the stereotypical closed-minded, Bible-thumping Christian who shouts at people to repent and gripes at kids to get off my lawn. I don’t want to reinforce their notion of a God who cares more about what rules everybody is breaking than about whether they know how much He loves them in spite of it. I don’t want to respond to hatred and contempt with more hatred and contempt.

I want to love them.

I want to show them grace.

I want to give them another chance, just like God continues to give me chance after chance after chance, even when I’m a complete jerk to everyone around me.

Because that’s who God is. And that’s who I should aspire to be like.

But the problem is, love always costs. It requires our time, our money, our energy, our pride. It’s hard, especially when the people we’re supposed to love aren’t so lovable. Selfishness, on the other hand, is easy. Selfishness is quick and cheap and safe. It doesn’t require any effort on our part, which is why it’s so often our default choice.

About a week and a half ago, Christy and I went to a concert in the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, a part of town you generally want to avoid after dark. As we were standing in line waiting to get in, a homeless man who obviously had mental health issues walked up to us, freaking out because he was convinced there was a snake in his shirt. I had no idea what to say or do. I tried to reason with him, hoping he would calm down, but when that didn’t work, I humored him, telling him it was just a little snake and that he wasn’t in any danger. Honestly, I was just hoping he would go away. And mind you, this was at a Christian concert while we were in line with a bunch of other Christians. Did it cross my mind to help him take his shirt off (as the guy in front of me did, after which the man seemed to come to his senses)? No. Did it cross my mind to give him the 20 bucks I had in my wallet so he could at least buy a meal or two? No. Did it cross my mind to pray over him or tell him how much God loves him? No. Why? Because that would’ve cost me, and I was way more interested in what I wanted than what he needed.

I failed, and I’m not proud of it.

I want to have a heart for God and a heart for others. I want to love. Genuinely and openly and unselfishly. Even though it’s hard. Even though it costs.

I did apologize to my neighbor the next day for yelling at him. Hopefully that’s at least a start. Hopefully there’s still time to be the neighbor that God has called me to be.