Answering Your Neighboring Questions

So far I have really enjoyed The Art of Neighboring, and it sounds like a lot of you are benefitting from it as well. The material is so helpful, and from the response, I’d say it has been challenging and eye-opening for many.
 
I wanted to use this week’s blog to answer a few questions. Now, to be clear, I am paraphrasing conversations I’ve had. But if some people have these questions, there are probably others who have similar questions.
 
Does loving my literal neighbor have to come at the expense of loving my neighbor at the gym (Or wherever)?
Of course not. In the first week, I explained that everyone is your neighbor! One of our church mottos is to share the love of Christ where we live, learn, work, and play. We do pretty well in most of those places, but I believe many of us have a blind spot for loving those where we live… our literal next-door neighbors.
 
I’ve thought a lot about why this may be, and I think it’s because the only thing we may have in common with the neighbor next door is proximity. In every other area of life, we probably share a common interest or goal with them. So, loving our next-door neighbors takes more intentionality and effort, but the level of difficulty in neighboring doesn’t mean we can leave them out of the Great Commandment.
 
What if my neighbor hates me?
If they hate you, you should assess yourself and see if you are living in a way that harms your relationship with them. Jesus said people would hate us when we follow him, but that doesn’t mean everyone who hates us hates us because of Jesus. Sometimes we need to work on ourselves. If we're the problem, mending that relationship will take time, probably a conversation, and maybe an apology.
 
But sometimes people will just hate us for what seems like no reason. It could be because of a misunderstanding or maybe they just hate everyone. Sometimes people don't want to have a relationship with us, and that’s ok. We should keep loving them in any capacity we can, while also accepting that we may never have a friendship with them.
 
I had a misunderstanding with a neighbor a few years ago and he hated me. This neighbor was an elderly man so I tried to show him love by continuing to shovel his sidewalk. He may have hated my guts, but he never asked me to stop!
 
In the rare circumstance that a neighbor is physically dangerous to you, there are times when it is appropriate to stay away from them. In some cases, it may be the most loving thing to contact the authorities. Again, we don’t choose our neighbors, but we can’t let rare circumstances determine how we neighbor the rest of the time.
 
What if my neighbor is a pain?
In the city, we may live in very close proximity to more people than we’d like. You may have neighbors above, below, across, and beside you. This proximity gives a lot of opportunity for conflict. From noisiness to marijuana smoke, living next to people is hard! Since I left my parent’s house, I have not lived in a single-family unit, and I have lived close to a lot of people and dealt with a lot of annoying things.
 
There is no doubt, it can be hard to love our neighbor when we don’t even like them. The best advice that I can give is to do your best to communicate any issues in love and have a lot of kindness and grace toward them. My guess is, as much as they get on your nerves, you probably get on theirs. Again, it’s hard living close to people!
 
When one of our neighbors had a new baby, we heard that little guy crying at all hours of the night. I was annoyed at how it was affecting my sleep, but Allie saw an opportunity to serve. She is very sensitive toward the difficulties of a newborn, so instead of complaining, she heard the cries as a reminder to love them. She turned on a fan for white noise, cooked them a meal, and asked if they needed anything else. Sometimes the most frustrating circumstances can lead to opportunities to love.
 
Try your best to humanize your neighbors, give them the benefit of the doubt, and put yourself in their shoes. They may be going through things you never imagined.
 
Ok, I hope that helps. If you have any other questions I would love to answer them. Please join us tomorrow for week three of The Art of Neighboring as we explore how to overcome your greatest neighboring fears. So you in worship!