Love your neighbour - as long as he is like you?

Yesterday I wrote about the late John Stott and his book Basic Christianity and his comment on Nominal Christianity. And I had to agree wholeheartedly with that.
Today I was startled by something else he wrote - in his final chapter on Being a Christian. 
Indispensable marks of the Child of God, he wrote, are "Righteousness of life and practical love to one's neighbours, especially to one's Christian brethren..." (my emphasis).
Surely he cannot have meant that? Does Jesus say anywhere in the gospels that we should favour fellow Christians over other people? Love your neighbour as yourself, but especially so if he is a Christian like you?
I was at a conference not long ago where I heard Geshe Tashi Tsering, resident Geshe at the Jamyang Buddhist Centre in London, speak on The Spirit of Compassion in Tibetan Buddhism.
There are three groups of people in our lives, he told us; those very close to us whom we love, those acquaintances whom we dislike, and the remaining large group whom we ignore or to whom we are indifferent. We need to break down those divisions by abandoning any self -interest in our relationships and actions. He reminded us that even though our personal circumstances, cultures, upbringings may be different, we fundamentally all have the same yearnings, rights, desire to be happy and not suffer. We are all human. And we must feel these things at heart level, he said. Only then can we cultivate compassion towards others, and meditation is vital to this process.

Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, explained on his visit to the new Hindu Temple of Shri Venkateswara (Balaji) in Birmingham on 15 November 2008, ‘interfaith dialogue is not a way of obliterating our differences, it's a way of living creatively with them. A way of living gratefully with them, so that our compassion, our love and our fellow feeling do not stop simply with those who are like us.’

In his previous New Year message for 2007 he had spoken of the need for us to put right the injustices of the world, to realize that such issues are an affront to our own dignity. In some way they make each of us less of a person. We will be fed and nourished spiritually only when we really and honestly wake up to the needs of our fellow human beings, learning together to reach out to them, to heal, feed, and befriend those less fortunate than ourselves.And he wasn't saying just reach out to our own kind!

Martin Luther King in his Nobel Lecture reminded us that "All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich. We are inevitably our brothers’ keeper because of the interrelated structure of reality."

Three centuries earlier the Renaissance author and Anglican priest John Donne famously wrote in 1624:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Followers of the Baha’i faith see Earth as one country of which we are all citizens. One of their guiding principles is that ‘the oneness of humanity is the fundamental spiritual and social truth shaping our age.’ 
Now I know that the Apostle Paul, writing in his first epistle to the Corinthians, on human worth, likened the worldwide body of Christians with the human body. All parts of the body are essential for the complete welfare of the whole. In the same way we all need each other and the loss of any part weakens us all: there should be no discord between us. He taught his followers that the members of the church should ‘have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together.’ The ‘body’ in this biblical context is translated from the Greek Soma, related to Sozo meaning ‘to heal, preserve, be made whole.’ We are not whole: we are wounded or spiritually impoverished if we are not a part of the greater body of faith in our community. We all need to feel that connectedness, that relationship. We need to find unity within the wide diversity of all our individual gifts. We all need each other and we all are special in the eyes of God. 
But we cannot have some of us more special than others. Can we?

^{So I think, just for once, John Stott was wrong.}

Religion as a Great Soft Cushion

I’m just rediscovering John Stott’s gem of a little book, Basic Christianity, picked up secondhand for a few pence not so long ago. I’m reading the May 1964 reprint, (selling price 3shillings and 6 pence in very old money – or seventeen and a half new pence and I guess not many US Cents!!) but it might just as well have been written for today’s world. And this post is not just for Christians!
One particular passage has caught my eye.
The great scandal of Christianity (now, I submit, as well as then), is so-called “nominal Christianity, as “large numbers of people have covered themselves,” he writes, “ with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity. They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved; enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable. Their religion is a great, soft cushion. It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience.”

Google “nominal Christianity” and you get over 11 million hits. So it’s clearly an issue today! One hit caught my eye, from the Christian Post, about the “Radical Groups” being formed by Rick Warren and Steve Gladen at Saddleback Church, California. They want to shake up their congregation, trying to reach every believer to show them how to balance five biblical principles, which include fellowship, discipleship, worship, ministry and evangelism. These five aspects should be present not only in church but in one’s personal life and lifestyle as well (my emphasis, although I'm not totally sure about the evangelism thread - that's a topic up for discussion another day in the context of religious tolerance I think). And the way to do this is in small group settings, what they call their Radical Groups.
And these will surely be tackling that great big soft cushion. Christianity was never going to be easy and soft. Take up your cross, Jesus said, before you can follow me. That means, as explained by John Stott, giving Him our thoughtful and total commitment. And that means in every thing we do, even when the going gets tough and there is no soft cushion to act as a buffer.
The great John Stott died in July this year aged 90, in a lovely English village called Lingfield. He was once ranked as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Times Magazine. I recommend his little book to anyone Christian or non-Christian alike, who wants to understand a little more about what it means to be a Christian.
Because understanding each others' faiths is key to being able to respect each others' faiths.
And more than that - we can all, religious or not, critically look at ourselves and see if we are perhaps protecting ourselves too much from the harsh realities of the world beyond our own safe sanctuaries, not taking our own responsibilities for what lies beyond our own front door, our own big soft cushion. Are we too comfortable?
I make no apology for posting this on my two blogs- something I won't do too often, I promise, but it seems very relevant to both!!