Once upon a time, a wealthy young man approached Jesus with a pointed question:
“Good Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
It’s a great question, isn’t it?
Jesus answered by reminding him of several of the commandments: Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Honor your parents.
The young man could hardly contain himself. “I’ve kept all of those since I was a kid!” he responded. I’m sure he was telling the truth.
But then Jesus said something completely unexpected. “There’s still one thing you lack.”
One thing.
Can you imagine the anxious silence that followed that revelation?
“Go,” he said, “sell everything you own, and give it to the poor. Then come and follow me.”
We're told the young man walked away sad. He knew the commandments. He had lived a morally upright life. He even believed enough in Jesus to seek Him out. Yet somehow, all of that knowledge had not yet become transformative.
Over the past few weeks, I've been immersed in the book of Jonah. My focus has centered on the similar tension Jonah faced, as exposed in Chapter 4. There, we learn that Jonah – a true believer in God – had all the knowledge a man could ask for:
"I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love," he quotes from the book of Exodus.
You see, Jonah’s problem wasn't bad theology. His problem was that he didn't want God to be gracious and compassionate toward those people. You know, “outsiders.”
As I traced Jonah’s story from beginning to end, I noticed something else that’s stunningly profound, yet easy to miss. Everyone and everything in his story responds positively to God. The wind responds. The sea does, too. The pagan sailors do. The fish does. The Ninevites do. Even the plant, the worm, and the scorching east wind immediately do what God asks. This is ironic, since none of them possesses as much knowledge about God as Jonah does. This isn’t to say that Jonah never responds. He just consistently responds in ways that resist God's heart for others.
The longer I spent with this, the more uncomfortable it became. I very quickly realized that Jonah isn't really a story about a fish and a reluctant prophet, as many people assume.
The book of Jonah is a mirror.
One of the questions Jonah forces readers to wrestle with is whether our greatest spiritual blind spots aren't found in the things we don't know about God, but in the places where we know exactly who He is and still struggle to see people the way He does.
Neighboring has a way of exposing that.
It's easy to love the concept of neighboring. But it's much harder when those neighbors don't look like us, vote like us, speak our language, share our culture, or fit comfortably into the circles we naturally inhabit. Sometimes it's the couple down the street we always hear yelling at each other. Sometimes it's the elderly widow whose loneliness is hidden behind a closed front door. Sometimes it's the Muslim family of refugees trying to make a home in a new, unfamiliar place. Sometimes they're the rebellious teenagers everyone else has already written off.
If I'm honest, my biggest obstacle to neighboring isn't a lack of opportunity, since opportunities abound all around me. My biggest obstacle is perspective.
Neighboring begins with noticing. Before help or compassion is ever extended, we must first see that person as someone worth noticing. That's exactly where Jonah struggled. He saw Nineveh as an enemy to condemn; God saw 120,000 image-bearers who mattered deeply to Him.
In Jonah’s case, his story ends abruptly. "Should I not have concern for them?" God asks the wayward prophet. We never hear Jonah’s response. Instead, we’re left hanging with that lingering question mark. It’s a stroke of literary genius because, by this point, we understand the question is no longer aimed at Jonah.
The question is for us.
Will we allow what we already know about God to reshape the way we see the people around us? Maybe our greatest need isn't another Bible study, podcast, worship night, or profound theological insight. Maybe it's allowing the truths we've known for years to travel the longest distance of all: from our minds to our hearts.
When this happens, neighbors stop becoming interruptions, political opponents, or strangers to avoid. They become what they have always been: people made in the image of God, deeply loved by Him and worthy of being seen.
Perhaps that's where loving our neighbors truly begins.
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Robert Johnson
Director of Formation, NeighborLink Foundation Inc
Robert is the Director of Formation at NeighborLink. Before stepping into this role, he served for six years on staff with NeighborLink Fort Wayne, most recently as Director of Communications and Development. Robert enjoys telling stories about neighbors and the transformational impact of neighboring. Outside of work, he loves traveling with his family, reading, and pursuing a life shaped by the Gospel.