Neighborly Sin

For Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Proverbs 14:21

Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner,
but blessed is he who is generous to the poor.

This proverb is likely intended to complement the previous proverb:
The poor is disliked even by his neighbor,
but the rich has many friends.

The poor may be disliked by his neighbor, but that neighbor then is sinning. Here's the point. Out attitude towards out neighbor is not to be controlled by the condition of our neighbor. Remember Jesus' teaching through his parable of the Good Samaritan. The question is not to be Who is my neighbor? but To whom will I be a neighbor? And the answer is that we are to treat everyone as our neighbors whom we are to love.

Again, the focus here is on the status of our neighbor. We don't choose to love or withhold love according to his income, social status, or other classification. Our neighbor's attitude toward us will influence our behavior towards him. If he is friendly, we will be friendly; if he is hostile, we will be guarded. Even so, we are still called by Christ to love him. If he is hostile, we are still to pray for him and look for opportunity to do him good. If he is reserved towards us, we are still to look for ways to befriend him. Let us be generous to our neighbors who are poor in social graces and poor in loving. For our Lord was generous to us while we were poor in righteousness and love towards him.

The Poor and the Rich

For Monday, December 5, 2005
Proverbs 14:20

The poor is disliked even by his neighbor,
but the rich has many friends.

This is an "observation" proverb, not one intended to instruct us on how we should be. It makes the unpleasant observation that a poor person must go through extra effort to prove himself to be a "good" person, while a rich person must make the effort to prove himself not a good friend. We take quickly to the rich person for a couple of reasons. One, we more naturally take him to be a "quality" person. He has proven himself to be a hard worker, smart, and so on. He must be a good person to be around. Two, it is advantageous to have him as a friend because he is in position to hand out favors, be it money, good references, etc.

The poor man - well, we want to know why he is poor - drugs? laziness? There must be something about his character that keeps him in his position. If he is friendly, we must be suspicious that he wants something from us.

This is reality. The sober truth is that we reveal more about ourselves than the rich or the poor. We naturally gravitate to the rich and naturally shy away from the poor. We naturally will trust the rich and distrust the poor. It is true that we are to be discerning of both rich and poor; we are to be cautious in indebting ourselves to others, as well as making others indebted to us. But because the deck is stacked against the poor, all the more we are to make the effort to know the poor neighbor so that we are in a position to be discerning. All the more we should take time to talk with our poor neighbor to know him as a person. We certainly will not be competing with many others for his attention.