Loving Your NeighborSýnishorn

People always ask me, “John, how do you make friends?” I tell them, the first thing is to know and understand the other person. People usually want to start by talking about their program. You don’t start with your program but with the people and their needs. Eventually, this will form a bond that ties you together. The program comes out of what the other person wants to do because our program may be entirely different from what is needed.

In the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA), we have a felt-need concept that helps us find that mutual need which will bind us together by affirming each other’s dignity without dehumanizing us. To become friends with someone, you have to find that person’s deepest longing and need. In the CCDA, we use the words of this poem to guide our efforts:

Go to the people, live among them, learn from them, love them. Start with what they know, build on what they have: But of the best leaders, when their task is done, the people will remark, “We have done it ourselves.” 

The scripture commands us to develop a friendship with others. Jesus taught that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. In Luke 10:30–37, when a young man questioned who his neighbor was, Jesus responded by telling him the story of the Good Samaritan. We can learn a lot from this story about making friends with a stranger. 

The Samaritan became friends with the man who had been beaten because he saw his need. He had compassion on him and met his need—just as Jesus would have done. His response was different from that of the priest and the Levite. They were both religious men. There’s been a lot of discussion about why they would have passed by instead of stopping to help. Consequently, it seems that their religious rules kept them from caring enough to help.

If our religion keeps us from helping people in need, it’s probably the wrong kind of religion. If our religion allows us to walk away from helping people who are hurting and in desperate need, something is wrong. Not caring is not an option if we are friends of God and if the Holy Spirit is reproducing the character of Christ in our hearts and lives. For someone who is a friend of God, not caring is like not breathing. Just like we have to breathe to survive, we have to care to survive—because caring is what makes us alive spiritually. It stokes the fires of passion in our hearts and becomes a magnet that beckons others.