Why We Prefer Theoretical Neighbors

A couple of my kids have gotten into a new toy called a Bitzee. If you're unfamiliar with this latest fad, it's a digital pet or character you take care of. When I was a child, we had something similar in the form of the Tamagachis. One of my kids is taking care of dogs while another has dinosaurs. From what I can gather, if you take care of your animal, you unlock more of them. If you don't, they run away. Evidently, it would be too traumatic for the kids for them to die. Instead, I think they then have to woo their animal back (nothing abusive or traumatic in this chain repeating itself over and over).

But the premise is solid. Relationships of meaning come with natural demands. If you are interested in a healthy marriage, you will have to become aware of the natural needs of marriage upon you and adjust accordingly. If you are interested in having friends, you will have to meet the natural demands of friendship.

Life is full of demands. We've got career demands, relationship demands, parental demands, social demands, and on and on. Often, when we feel strong in one area, it's because we've unknowingly neglected others. Therefore, it's only natural to look for ways to feel like we can better meet the demands in front of us.

The American child psychologist Ross W. Greene noted how kids respond to demands in their lives. "Challenging behavior occurs when the demands being placed upon a child outstrip the skills he has to respond adaptively to those demands." Which means the goal for avoiding "challenging behavior" is to increase the child's skills so they are adequate to meet the demands.

I would push this further and say that the same thing is true of adults as well. Many of us do not have adequate skills to meet the demands being placed upon us. Instead of merely exhibiting our own challenging behaviors, we often devise complex ways to defend (and enable) our imbalance.

I recently attended a lecture with Dr. Noreen Herzfeld. She brings a unique perspective as a scholar of both computer science and theology. She said, "AI is showing us that we want humans who will place no demands on us." That helps explain much of the current trajectory toward artificial intelligence. My ChatGPT doesn't get annoyed when I haven't checked in for a while. It seems to be fine with our one-sided conversations. And honestly, I think there is a healthy place and use for that. I don't think of ChatGPT as a real person with real feelings (even though I've found it healthy for my own sense of self to be polite to it).

But the danger here is that we start to look for other ways to get what we need without fulfilling the healthy demands that come with it. Dr. Herzfeld primarily spoke about AI in her lecture, but she made a powerful connection. "This is why so many Christians choose to focus on the unborn," she said. "They don't place demands on us."

This is the reason why Christian Nationalism has been primarily built on the moral platform of fighting for the unborn. It provides a moral sense of rightness (which evidently allows one to stomach just about everything else). But as Dr. Herzfield observes, it doesn't demand much of you to say this. That's because we are talking about theoretical people, rather than the actual people around us.

• But if you want to talk about caring for kids in foster care who need a home, that will demand much from you.
• If you want to talk about caring for kids in immigrant families that need support, that will demand much from you.
• If you want to talk about caring for kids in underserved areas with financial needs, that will demand much from you.
• If you want to talk about caring for kids with special needs, that will demand much from you.

And on and on the list could go. We tend to prefer moral positions that affirm us without involving us. This presents a challenge for those of us deciding to follow Jesus. Will we practice our beliefs in ways that demand something from us? Or will we instead focus on saying the things that sound right and allow ourselves the freedom to be personally uninvolved?

Consider Jesus' famous parable of the good Samaritan found in Luke 10:30-37. The priest and Levite almost certainly held the right beliefs about life, holiness, and morality. They just couldn’t afford the relational demand in front of them. The Samaritan, by contrast, embodies exactly what Dr. Herzfeld is naming: care for actual people, not theoretical ones.

Then, Jesus reverses the question He was initially asked. “Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” (Luke 10:36). The issue isn’t who qualifies as my neighbor. The issue is whether I am the kind of person who actually loves my neighbor. The Good Samaritan isn’t a story about having better beliefs. It’s a story about allowing love to inconvenience you.

My child's Bitzee dog might merely run away if neglected, but my actual dogs would be harmed far more in real life. Even more so the priceless people all around me who were made in the image of God. It's time for those of us who want to offer something beautiful to this world to discern the difference and rise to meet the demands.

“Now go and do the same.” (Luke 10:37)

Photo by Christian Stahl on Unsplash