Loving My Neighbor: What’s In It For Me?

Yesterday I read an article in Parade magazine proclaiming that ninety-eight percent of Americans today “have engaged in at least one activity to make a difference.” I wasn’t surprised; only disheartened.

If you haven’t noticed, it’s become quite popular—even trendy, cool, or fashionable—to volunteer.  Church vans drop off the suburbanite youth group kids at God’s Kitchen to serve dinner for an hour a month. Families watch wide-eyed as celebrities tearfully offer their help on Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Some schools require “service hours” as a requirement for graduation. People everywhere are being praised for doing their “activities” to make a difference.

And then, of course, they return to their real lives.

I’m not sure when we reduced the concept of “helping others” to “activities,” but, to be fair, I don’t think we ever meant for it to come to this. After all, it’s not that we don’t admire those who apply Jesus’ “love your neighbor as yourself” commandment to their entire lives; we do. In fact, we idolize them, we are amazed by them, we even wish we could be like them.

A movie that recently came out, The Blind Side, tells the story of an affluent white family that invites a poor, African-American young man from the streets into their family. The movie, based on a true story, was a surprise hit. Everyone loved it—and not, as some might think, because it was simply a heartwarming tale of love and compassion. No, we loved it because it stirred in us the desire and the belief that maybe it really is possible to make a life out of helping others.

So it’s not that we aren’t keen on the idea of helping others. But while we do sincerely love it, praise it, and, most of all, love to be praised for it, we don’t want to go out on a limb. We will happily and cheerfully give money, go on mission trips, serve food to the homeless, and, afterward,  program in our Blackberries the next time we plan to help others, but we don’t want to actually reprioritize our lives. We don’t have the time to dedicate our entire lives to helping others. God might be calling some people to that, but not us. A once-in-a-while activity is good enough, and, consequently, that’s all helping others has become.

I have to confess that I really like this mentality too. It makes life a lot easier. This past Christmas, a teenage girl that I mentor asked me if she could spend the holidays with my family.

“But don’t you want to spend it with your family?” I ask, but not because I think she would really want to.  The truth is, I want to spend it with my family. Just my family. Just like I have every other year since I was born.

“Nooo! I want to spend it with yours!” She pleads.

“Well…we’ll see.” She slumps down in the passenger seat, because she knows what that means. I do too. It means I don’t really want to change my comfortable life—I like it just fine the way it is.

Somehow the notion that helping others might not always be so fun and praiseworthy—but that it might actually involve a life-change—has never occurred to us. Of course serving a meal to the homeless is fun—once a month. But how about doing that every day? Is it fun then? When the meal is finished, the plates are cleaned up, and the people have nowhere to go, is it fun then? Of course taking my mentee out to dinner is fun—but how about when she wants to spend Christmas at my house? I guess I never realized that transitioning from extracurricular volunteering to lifestyle volunteering might actually involve a change in my life. But I have realized that it might actually make a difference.

On September 29, 2009 on Good Morning America, Disney announced a new program targeted at potential Disney-goers, called “Give a Day. Get a Disney Day.” This promotional offered people a free day at Disney in exchange for volunteering. One of my friends decided to look into it online, since we were going to be going to Orlando in a few weeks. She read the volunteering options off to us:

“Help build a home! Nah. Raffle ticket sales…hmm…Parking attendant?! Kill me now. Locker room attendant, deep cleaning at the YMCA…ugh.” She made a noise of disgust, and I used this pause to interject my thoughts.

“Don’t you feel like there is something wrong with this program though?”

“What?”

“Like, this thing, this volunteer thing. Getting a free ticket to Disney for volunteering one time.”

“No! People volunteer one time and then they realize they like it and go back! I think it’s great! I love it. What’s wrong with it?”

I guess nothing, if helping others means trading one activity of service for a ticket to Disney. Nothing, if you need a reward to convince you to help people.

In a response to this Disney announcement, one blogger commented, “This year when you get in free to a Disney Park, you can celebrate the ways in which you have made the world a better place. Cheers for Volunteers!”

Nothing’s wrong with this comment either, if helping others is another way to celebrate ourselves, if helping others is a way to remind ourselves of the amazing things we have done. Maybe if we stopped focusing on what would make us feel good, and instead started focusing on what would make a difference, we could actually make one.

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not against volunteering at soup kitchens, going on mission trips, or sponsoring children in Africa; I’m against what we want in return. I’m against the expectation that helping others is a one-time activity, that we deserve to be praised for it. But most of all, I’m disappointed. Disappointed that loving your neighbor consists of glamorized activities that people do to earn rewards—and that we have yet to realize that there is anything wrong with this definition. When selling raffle tickets in exchange for a ticket to Disney can be called “helping others,” it’s no wonder ninety-eight percent of society does it.

Jen Erickson is studying to be a Secondary Education teacher, with a major in Spanish and a minor in English.  She attends Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.