A Veteran and My Neighbor - guest blogger, Justin Jeremias

Thanks mom for sharing your platform with me.

Last week I walked into a chiropractor’s office. I wish I was there for an adjustment, but instead I was there to work on the chiropractor’s computer. While I worked on his computer I had the pleasure of listening to his story. It was a slow computer. We had lots of time to talk and he told me quite a tale. Here’s the quick version.

He was born in New Jersey and only made it through the 7th grade. Somehow he learned some basic medical procedures from nuns at a Catholic hospital. In 1968 he was arrested and beaten for crimes he didn’t commit. When he was tried and convicted, he chose to enlist in the Army to avoid jail. In the Army he became a medic with the airborne and saw horrible things. He told me how he arrived in Vietnam as a conscientious objector and quickly decided that he had to carry a gun or die. After the war he came home under a shroud of disgrace instead of honor and has suffered from PTSD every day since. He testified before congress about Vietnam and PTSD. He advocated for Vietnam Veterans to receive treatment equal to their sacrifice. A time later, while he was working on finishing school, he was shot and almost died at a convenience store in an Atlanta suburb. Of course he had to leave Vietnam to get shot. He completed school after recovering and is now a 70ish year old chiropractor in Georgia, still being treated differently because of the color of his skin, still waking up in the middle of the night because of what he saw 50 years ago. But as he described his life over the course of 3 hours, the thing he kept coming back to was how he values generosity because he feels so blessed. 

I don’t understand that. What a story. I left that day so grateful that I got to talk to him and learn about his life.

“He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself’”

Luke 10:27, NIV

What do you think it means to love your neighbor?

Who is your neighbor?

Is it possible to love your neighbor if you don’t try to learn about and understand them?

I think the answers we know in our head and hearts often fail to make it into the way we act, that we often try to pass off loving our neighbor as wishing them well, and that we often try to qualify our neighbors as people who are similar to us.

I hate to break it to you (and me) but that’s not love and that’s not your only neighbor.

Love is self sacrifice; when you put someone else’s interests before your own. If it’s easy, it's probably not love because selflessness goes against our nature. Any married person can tell you that love takes work (my wife is nodding in agreement), and that’s loving someone you choose!

Now more than ever, when we are at peak division, it is imperative that we love our neighbor. The world is looking at Christians to see what we will do and how we will treat people who see things differently than we do. Loving your neighbor isn’t a prescription for just living, it is a picture to show you and the people who see you what the Kingdom of God is supposed to be like. The first shall be last, the weak are strong, the son of God was born in a manger, and you love people who aren’t like you. Loving your neighbor isn’t important because it’ll fix things, though it surely will make the world better. It is important because loving your neighbor is foundational to who we are as followers of Jesus. 

I’ve been thinking about these questions for the past year or so and I think by God’s grace sort of fell into a new habit. I’ve been trying (against my nature) to ask people, especially those who are different from me about themselves and then I shut my mouth and listen. This is what led to the story I relayed above. It doesn’t always end like that. Sometimes because hurt people are hesitant to be vulnerable and sometimes because they’ve learned to expect a debate, but it’s worth trying because you just never know.

The amazing thing about loving your neighbor is that as you hear the stories and perspectives of people who are different, you learn to empathize and are changed for having understood their point of view a little better. There are parts of our worldview that we think is fact, but is really an often echoed opinion. When you have more data to calibrate your understanding of the world, you learn to better discern truth and perspective. Today on Veteran’s Day we are able to understand and love veterans a little better because of this man’s story.

Ask someone else about their life. Ask them why they think the way they do. Then listen. Don’t ask to change their mind. Ask to learn. It would be impossible to make this a habit and not be changed. In the ensuing parable, the priest and the Levite looked at the man on the side of the road and saw what made them different, but the Samaritan saw that he was hurting and in need even though they were pretty different people. The implication is that if the Samaritan saw their differences, he understood the man’s pain more than he was worried about their differences. Also, if you have to ask if someone is your neighbor, the answer is yes. This is loving your neighbor. This is what the kingdom of God will be like. Let’s be people who bring the kingdom into the world we live in today.

photo from https://vietnamblacksoldiersportraitproject.com/index.php/services/