by Dick Jones
Jesus knew how to tell a story. He understood that none of the people listening to his parable—least of all the lawyer who asked, “Who is my neighbor?”—would have considered a Samaritan fit for that description.
That was the whole point. He was showing his audience how to think outside the box.
So who is my neighbor when it comes to climate change? To answer that question, I invite you to arrive at an understanding of neighborhood that goes beyond our street address, our church friends, our professional affiliations. I invite you to see the world in a communal rather than an individualistic way.
A column by United Methodist writer Jeanne Finley pointed me to the words of Robert Penn Warren. In the novel All the King’s Men, Warren says, “The world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter.”
If you begin to see the world this way, then you suddenly have many more neighbors than maybe you thought you had.
Read more at the Church of the Brethren’s Messenger