{"id":433,"date":"2017-07-01T18:26:58","date_gmt":"2017-07-01T18:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/messenger\/?p=433"},"modified":"2018-09-20T19:17:03","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T19:17:03","slug":"as-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/from-the-publisher\/as-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"As yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>What does it mean to love your neighbor?<\/strong>\u00a0For young adults in the Church of the Brethren, that was worth a whole weekend of study this summer. The theme scripture was Matthew 22:36-39, in which Jesus reminds the scribe of the law to love your neighbor as yourself\u2014a commandment recorded in Leviticus 19:17-18 and utterly familiar to his listeners.<\/p>\n<p>And who is our neighbor? Well, we know the answer to that question, since the story of the good Samaritan is just about the most well-known of Jesus\u2019 parables. The moral of the story: Be like the Samaritan.<\/p>\n<p>In my focus on the Samaritan, however, I realize that I have neglected the man in the ditch. Often he\u2019s just a prop for the lesson. Instead, I have always identified with the helpers. In fact, I have\u00a0<em>automatically<\/em>\u00a0identified with the helpers. But Jesus says I am to love my neighbor and my neighbor is the Samaritan, which makes me the person who needs help.<\/p>\n<p>What would it mean to put myself in the victim\u2019s position and listen to what he needs? Not to solve the problem as if he were me, but to learn what it is like to be\u00a0<em>him?<\/em>\u00a0To really see this man and learn his name? Could this be why the commandment includes the words\u00a0<em>as yourself?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The rabbis use a metaphor to help us better understand this connection between neighbor and self: If someone is chopping food and in doing so cuts one hand, does he then avenge himself on the hand which held the knife by cutting that hand too?<\/p>\n<p>We are one body. If we take vengeance on our neighbors, we punish ourselves. We love our neighbor as ourselves because our neighbor is part of us.<\/p>\n<p>As we see our country and our world disagreeing dramatically about who this neighbor is, studying scripture matters. If anybody tries to tell you that discussing these things is too political and not religious enough, then take them to church. Take them to the Young Adult Conference. Read them Leviticus and Matthew\u2014 and Mark and Luke and Romans and Galatians and Ephesians and James. Show them that actually we cannot be holy if we don\u2019t love our neighbors as ourselves. The Bible tells us so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is it like to be the one in the ditch?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":434,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[49,38],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-publisher","tag-from-the-publisher","tag-wendy-mcfadden"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}