Don’t Love Everyone

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Mark 1:35-39

The Third Discourseman

With Jesus’ reputation as a healer and exorcist on the rise, and with many people looking to bring their sick to him, Jesus does something surprising. He leaves. He leaves behind the crowds that are looking for him in order to go on to the next towns, so that he might preach there, because that is why he came out. Note in passing that this move from Jesus will never be anything but baffling for people who think that Jesus came primarily to meet the physical needs of the poor and the sick in this world. Without doubt Jesus looks on the poor and the sick with compassion, which often does lead him to use his power to help or heal them. Yet his priority here is to preach, and he is willing to leave behind numerous sick people in great need of healing to do so. Jesus, knowing that people were looking for him, didn’t help them.

That this is taught by the passage is evident, and yet it feels uncomfortable to voice it. Imagine each one of those people looking for him, each one an individual with a (potentially life-ruining) problem that could only be dealt with supernaturally. That’s a lot of mess, a lot of hurt, a lot of pain and frustration and heart-ache that Jesus ignores. For me, my mind moves to the parable of the good Samaritan. There Jesus tells someone they must love their neighbour, to which the man asks the seemingly innocent question ‘But who is my neighbour?’. In a subsequent parable, Jesus tells of a man left beaten by the roadside, in desperate need, yet who is passed by twice before someone (a Samaritan) stops to help him. Jesus then inverts the question- who proved to be a neighbour to the man in need? The questioner’s whole mindset is wrong- rather than coming up with a set of people who classify as his ‘neighbours’, so that he knows who he must help and who he can safely get away with not helping, he should aim to love anyone in his path. His neighbour is the person next to him, whoever that might be, to whom he is able to show love and care.

So is Jesus passing this crowd by? Has he missed his own lessons in being a good neighbour? Unsurprisingly, the answer is no. So how do we reconcile these two ideas? I think the key is in the word ‘neighbour’. We are not commanded ‘love everybody’, but ‘love your neighbour’. But isn’t the point of the good Samaritan that these two are essentially the same? That everyone is my neighbour? Emphatically no. There’s a big difference between saying ‘everyone is my neighbour’ compared to what the parable actually teaches, that ‘anyone could be my neighbour’. Despite all the criteria that the man on the wayside fails to meet (not being the same race as the Samaritan, not being someone the Samaritan knows personally etc) there is one important neighbourly criterion that he does manage to meet- he’s physically there. He’s nearby. He’s next to the Samaritan as he goes on his journey. In fact, after Jesus leaves, ignoring those who are looking for him, the very next story in Mark tells of Jesus healing a leper who comes up to him during his journeying. Though Jesus has not let himself get forced into staying where he is, healing member after member of an insatiable crowd, he has also not let his determination to preach the gospel get in the way of (physically) helping those in need who come to him.

I think this distinction is increasingly important to make in a globalised world where, at any moment, the problems of a group of people halfway across the world can become your problems, and you could spend an endless amount of time donating, protesting, writing, signing and generally supporting an unending list of causes- racial injustice, famines, diseases, poverty, homelessness, depression/mental health and many others. You can think about how to fix the economy, or the prison system, or the fossil fuel industry, or your university curriculum, or global political conflicts, or police brutality. On a positive note, this means we all have many opportunities to do good for others. But despite having developed technology that gives us the ability to read up about (and hence feel guilty over doing nothing about) almost any problem in the world, we have no greater physical/mental capacity to deal with all these problems than humans did millennia ago when the only problems one knew (and had the ability to do something) about were confined to one’s own village.

I have seen people online claim that ‘silence is complicacy’ about various causes. Perhaps in some instances this is true, but it cannot be affirmed in full generality. Yes, if you’re silent about everything and use the scale of world problems as an excuse to be selfish and unloving, to never do anything about anything, then you are guilty of sin. But we all need to recognise our own limitations. As creatures we are finite, dependant on food, drink and sleep even to survive a few days. We often don’t have enough time to deal with our own needs and the needs of those around us, let alone the needs of the whole world. As creatures the most befitting posture for us to take is not one of unending, tireless activism but of humility, meekness and trust in the God who has the energy to work tirelessly and endlessly, who has the capacity to involve himself in every world problem and every humanitarian crisis. Though there can be great love in saying ‘I need to help others, otherwise I’m complicit’, there can also be a great arrogance. ‘I need to help others, because if I don’t, who will? What this problem really needs is for me to be involved.’ Of course, none of us think like this (or at least few of us will recognise that we think like this), but surely this is the danger of a line of thinking that demands personal involvement in every major humanitarian crisis as a matter of obligation. It is a great reminder of our own limitations that while God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, he commands us to love our neighbour as ourselves. Not everybody, just those nearby. If Jesus, when he was physically limited as a human being who walked and ate and slept, who could only be in one place at a time, had no problems with leaving behind a crowd of people that needed him in order to go to another place where he felt he was needed more, so that he could fulfil his mission, then neither should we. We can look at Jesus, the most loving person ever, and conclude ‘Sometimes the most loving thing to do is walk away’.

Don’t feel guilty that you can’t help everyone. Don’t feel guilty that sometimes what you need is for someone to help you. Sometimes you have to be silent about some issues, so that you can speak up about others. That doesn’t have to be because you’re unconcerned or because you think that the problem doesn’t exist or is unimportant. It doesn’t have to mean that you agree with what’s happening, nor does it imply that somehow you’re complicit in every global issue you fail to make a Facebook post about. It might mean that you have something better to do, or even just something different to do. It might just mean that you’re human, not capable of loving everyone all the time. So don’t get trapped in the lies of pride and self-reliance. Don’t love everyone- love your neighbour.