NOTE: This piece was originally published at our newsletter A Public Witness.
The concept of “neighbor” is a pretty big deal within the Christian faith. In summarizing God’s law and his teachings, Jesus basically says love God with everything you’ve got and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39). It’s ironic that such a basic idea ends up being so difficult to implement.
That’s because neighbors are much harder to love in practice than in theory. Their personalities can be rough. They don’t always agree with us. Some of them may not have showered recently. When we encounter the neighbor we are supposed to love, we are encountering someone who is different from us and that means there’s a gap between us and them.
Amar Peterman’s new book, Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local, dares to take Jesus so seriously that it wants to help readers bridge that divide.
“I am convinced that the more we attend to the needs of our community, the more attuned we will be to God’s good purposes and actions in the world,” he writes. “The more we can open ourselves to the possibility of love — even love across our deep disagreements — the more we will find ourselves looking and living like Christ in our world.”
This might sound pollyannish. It might seem overly idealistic in these polarized and perilous times. But this is not a book written with naivete. Peterman is a doctoral student in theology with a history of building relationships across racial, religious, and economic boundaries. His wisdom is rooted in experience, not untethered optimism.
At the center of the vision Peterman casts is the table. Just as Christians gather for communion in a ritual that symbolizes our radical equality before God and God’s gracious acceptance of us, so sitting at a table to listen, share conversation, and break bread together is a way for us to discover new life with our neighbors.
“What will bring us to the table of shared, communal flourishing is a desire to enjoy both God and neighbor in and for themselves,” he suggests. “We love our neighbors because they, made in the image of God, are worthy of love. … We care about the quality and depth of these relationships because Jesus tells us this is the path to relationships of mutual flourishing. We come to the table because the people we love are there too.”
Or, perhaps, it could be better said that the people we are trying to love are there too. That’s because the book’s premise is that how we interact with our neighbors forms who we are as Christians. In exchanges that build relationships, we also have the chance to extend empathy and compassion. We gain new perspectives. We better understand someone else’s world in a way that influences and transforms us.
Loving our neighbors well, by desiring to know and serve them, helps us become better servants of God. Loving our neighbors poorly by ignoring their needs, dismissing their stories, and refusing them respect distorts our own lives as followers of Jesus.
That’s what makes this book such a gift. It’s a relatively quick read, but in less than 90 pages the reader encounters a framework for Christian ethics that’s highly relevant to our contemporary lives. It includes reflections on political theology that connect what we believe about God to how we understand the role of the church in the public square. It doesn’t shy away from naming and exploring differences, but it does so in a way that is generous and constructive. It’s a book with wisdom for scholars, pastors, and lay Christians working to remain steadfast to the hope they profess.
“Loving our neighbors transforms our minds and hearts precisely because it makes us aware of the extent of God’s divine love for us,” Peterman concludes. “When we love rightly through a resurrected imagination, we are freed to participate in God’s good, loving, and redemptive work happening around us.”
While we may not be physical neighbors, the community here at A Public Witness is a group with common questions and interests. The goal of our monthly book reviews is to provide resources for building each other up. Amar Peterman has generously offered to sign a copy of his Becoming Neighbors for us to give away to one of our paid subscribers. So make sure to upgrade your subscription today!
As a public witness,
Beau Underwood
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