In the Shadow of Babylon

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

– Luke 10:25-37

One of the most fiendish aspects of the Babylon mindset is that, even as we live in an age of unparalleled material comfort and security, we are maintained in a near-constant state of fear and anxiety.

This serves the interests of political parties and corporations very well, of course. The easiest way to get your vote is to, first, convince you that you and your family are in imminent danger and, second, to convince you that the only way to find safety is to vote for this or that party. The easiest way to sell you something is to create in you a sense of desire or inadequacy, then convince you that my product or, better still, my brand can help you reach that desire or soothe that sense of inadequacy. The easiest way to turn an employee into a virtual slave is to convince him that if he loses his employment with the company, he will lose everything he has.

These pressures – on our identity as voters, consumers, workers – and the sense of fear and hurry they create can make it very difficult to connect in any meaningful way with those around us. For one thing, it is hard to find the time, as we rush between work and the supermarket and the children’s lessons and the myriad other engagements that fill our days. For another, we may be afraid to reach out, perhaps because our neighbors are of a different race or class or political party. Perhaps we worry about gossip and intrusion or even theft. Like the priest and the Levite, we are more concerned with our own purity, our own pride, our own comfort, than with loving those around us.

However, our inability to engage our neighbors only feeds into a cycle of “contact without fellowship” and the potential for suspicion and even hatred that such contact engenders. Our neighbors become the villains in a drama half-concealed, known only by their barking dog or loud arguments or late-night vacuuming. More seriously, our refusal to stretch ourselves beyond our comfort level to love those around us puts us in direct opposition to Christ’s command to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are his friends if we do what he commands; when we deliberately turn from his simple commands, we lose the right to claim his friendship. So when we say that we are too busy or introverted or temperamentally unsuited to love those we come in contact with, in our neighborhoods, at our workplaces, on social media, we show ourselves to be the enemies, not the friends, of Jesus.

This can be a challenge, pulled as we are in so many directions at once, and I have certainly been – and continue to be – guilty of making excuses for my own indifference to those around me. But as I am realizing that reminding myself of Jesus’ love for my neighbors makes it much easier to love them myself, I am trying to make an effort to look for ways to serve others, for example by offering my seat on the bus or texting someone I know is having a tough time or bringing over goodies to a busy mom down the street. The more I do this, the easier it becomes.

As we show the simple love of conscious neighboring, we strike a blow against a system that insists that we don’t have time to waste on others and that we are too strapped to share out of what we have. We strike a blow against a system that encourages us to see people only through the lens of what they can do for us. Most importantly, we show ourselves to be true disciples of Jesus Christ, who not only hear his command to love but actually trust in him and his authority enough to do it.

With our tight schedules and tighter budgets, this may feel like a stretch, but can friends of Jesus do otherwise?

Can you imagine what Jesus’ ministry would look like if it took place in contemporary America?

If he went to the houses of worship to preach his message of God’s scandalously universal love, he would find them mostly empty: only about one in five Americans may be found in houses worship on any given Sunday. If he wanted to gather with his followers in someone’s home, he would have to face the risk that nobody could cook for him and his disciples, as only about half of Americans cook dinner on any given day. Perhaps our Lord would then consider moving the gathering to a restaurant, only to find that most restaurants are of the “grab and go” variety: fully 20% of all meals are consumed in cars. Maybe at that moment it would occur to Jesus that, in an age of widespread literacy, the perfect place to expound on his simple but astounding theories would be a bookstore. He would then have to confront the fact that fewer than half of books are purchased from brick-and-mortar booksellers. The rest are purchased as e-books or from online vendors. Scratching his head, Jesus might wonder where people congregate. The post office? E-mail and automatic bill pay mean that trips there are at an all-time low. The train station or bus stop? Nearly half of all Americans have no access whatsoever to public transit. The marketplace? Rather than representing a site of the regular procurement of fish, meats, dairy and baked goods, fruits, vegetables, sweets, clothing and durables crafted, raised or gathered by our neighbors, most of our shopping is done infrequently at supermarkets, malls and big box stores where an unpleasant environment and chaotic activity push us to grab, as quickly as possible, poor-quality, industrial products made and packaged far away from our homes before escaping into our vehicles. We may not even get the benefit of even the most superficial social interaction, as a large percentage of shopping is done online and an increasing percentage of in-store purchases are made using self-checkout. The demands on our time and energy have become so intense that many of us voluntarily live as shut-ins rather than waste precious hours acquiring basic necessities, with the result that so fragmented is our social and economic life that even our savior might have trouble sharing the Gospel if he were launching his ministry today.

One of the disturbing truths of economic life in Babylon is that, as it becomes easier and easier to get what we want at the moment we want it, we are becoming more and more isolated. For example, I dislike putting my life at the mercy of public transit as much as the next person, but when you take the same bus every morning, it is natural to build relationships with those you see at the stop every day. These relationships may be superficial or deeply meaningful, but they are not available to the independent, automobile-driving solo commuter.

While it is really, really nice to be able to buy toilet paper or sanitary napkins at eleven at night if the need arises, stretching the work day means that cashiers and other retail workers have difficulty maintaining the rhythms of family time, leisure time and worship time that have structure our lives as a species for millennia. An unintended consequence of an economy that more than ever caters to our individual tastes and desires is that we lose the social cushion that makes our economic and other activity about more than meeting our own needs and desires, but also provides a shared social experience; an opportunity to meet people outside of our race, class and profession; a means of supporting economic growth within the community; and a way of fostering the intangible connections that transform unrelated individuals into a community.

Economic strain is a part of our current landscape, and the resulting stress and frenzy make it hard to even take a day off. What would it look like to “waste time” by choosing ways of shopping, commuting, eating and living that maximize our opportunities to get to know and love our neighbors rather than focusing solely on our own convenience? What would it look like to rebel against the “what I want, when I want it” logic of our convenience-oriented landscape in order to expand our relationships and care for our environment? As a Kingdom community living as exiles in Babylon, let us look for ways to be faithful to our calling to value love over convenience. As a frequent user of online shopping services, I have difficulty doing this. But I feel like it is our God-given duty as Christians to try.