Loving Neighbor Versus the Least of These

Zoe Sandvig Erler's picture
Submitted by Zoe Sandvig Erler on Mon, 10/25/2010 - 07:01
Is it possible to love the least of these while hating your neighbor? Or love your neighbor and hate the least of these?
This past month, my husband and I were forced into these questions.
Behind our quaint neighborhood, a rusty eyesore sits unattended. A motel formerly occupied by prostitutes and drug dealers was forced to shut down three years ago, right after my husband moved into the house and long before I did. Before it closed, neighbors remembered frequent cop calls as troublemakers wandered through the streets. Since its closing, weeds have overtaken the parking lot and a chain-link fence has supposedly kept all vagrants out. Everyone has been at peace.
Until a few months ago.
Our neighborhood association learned that the owner of the vacated motel had offered to donate it to a local ministry to turn the building into a shelter for homeless families. The news was not well taken.
The questions flowed: What would become of property values? Would the streets again welcome danger?
Our sense of Christian compassion responded: But what about the least of these? Wouldn’t Jesus welcome homeless families? Wouldn't the truest response be one of compassion? And, clearly, homeless women and children wouldn’t create mischief like drug dealers.
But compassion is not always simple and the “Jesus way” isn’t always black and white. As we considered the lot of our neighbors, we realized that many might be struggling to make it themselves. Many are nearing retirement, having sunk their savings into the equity of their homes. What would happen to them if their property value dropped? The fear and concern of our neighbors forced us to realize that the potential of a homeless shelter in their neighborhood threatened them, and perhaps rightly so. And we were forced to admit the generosity of time that youth provides. We could bounce back from sinking house values. Many of our neighbors could not.
Who are we to tell our aging neighbors—many who have invested years and dollars their homes and heard the sirens scream down their streets—to buck up and say ‘yes’ to the shelter? Who were we to tell them to have compassion, they who have delivered freshly grown vegetables to our doorstep and have brought us housewarming gifts, who have showed us what it means to be a good neighbor? Who are we pass judgment? Who are we to tell them what Jesus would do?
After all the fears were voiced and all of the values weighed, we still concluded that a homeless shelter would be a gracious and good use of the abandoned motel. But to heedlessly promote such a plan without entering into the concerns of our neighbors would be an unkindness of its own. Mercy is not a bulldozer and we are not its drivers.
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