Love your Neighbor
"...You are not far from the Kingdom of God."
I was slapped in the face at church yesterday. Let me explain.
On Sunday morning, as I mindlessly scrolled LinkedIn (the last social media app left on my phone), a post by The Wall Street Journal caught my eye:
He was a lawyer living the American dream. Then mental illness turned his brilliant mind against him.
Ok, I’ll give this a read.
From Renaissance Man to Homeless Man
The story is about a homeless man in California named Rob Dart. As I read about Rob, his email to the WSJ reporter jarred me: “You should understand by now that I had quite a stable and productive life before I underwent any psychiatric treatment or therapy. I believe people in your position often use medicine to try to keep people from learning what they otherwise could.” If you’re as intrigued as I was and want to read further, this article by his high school friend provides more context.
As I went off to church, the smiling image of homeless Rob Dart came with me.
Reality shifted during the Covid saga. As Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, informed us — one result of the “Great Reset” is that we now live in an “angrier world.” But why is that the case? Do we have to live in that world?
By all standard notions, Rob Dart succeeded at life. High school Renaissance man. Duke University, undergrad. Law degree from the University of Chicago. Federal clerkship. Married, kid, prestigious job. Then…crash. Then a period of recovery, routine and purpose. Then the Covid lockdowns. Crash again. Evicted. Homeless.
So, what happened?
According to the WSJ article, his condition seemed to worsen after treatment in accordance with the standard of care for mental illness — a series of successively more powerful drugs until the patient is rendered a husk of a human being. He also seems to believe that he is being driven by something spiritual. In December 2022, when his mother was gathering his personal belongings after his eviction, she found an entry in one of his notebooks that read: “[t]here is a slim chance that this is in fact satan, I can’t take that chance.”
What if Rob Dart was writing about something he actually experienced?
Do we love our neighbors?
At the church service, pastors Austin Medley and Anna Walker-Roberts shared a message entitled “Loving God, Loving People.” You can watch it here. The message is based on the record of Mark 12:28-24, in which a lawyer asks Jesus “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, drawing from Deuteronomy 6:4-9:
“The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
The same conversation, as recorded by Luke the Evangelist (Luke 10), wraps up with Jesus sharing the parable of The Good Samaritan. It’s a story about showing compassion and mercy to the least among us. It’s definitely worth a read in this day and age.
I walked out of that service asking myself if I love my neighbors, or if instead I have allowed myself to succumb to Schwab’s “angrier world”?
Walker-Roberts referenced a book called The Art of Neighboring: Building Genuine Relationships Right Outside your Door. Here is a summary:
Once upon a time, people knew their neighbors. They talked to them, had cook-outs with them, and went to church with them. In our time of unprecedented mobility and increasing isolationism, it's hard to make lasting connections with those who live right outside our front door. We have hundreds of "friends" through online social networking, but we often don't even know the full name of the person who lives right next door.
So, what are we to do about neighbors like Rob Dart? Not everyone on the street wants to be there, but some do. Some have made choices, but others are listening to voices not their own. Voices that tell them they’re not good enough. Voices that tell them continued consciousness isn’t worth it. So, where do those voices come from, exactly? Is it possible that some people, like Rob Dart, are more attuned to those voices than others?
God is Love. Love is Reality.
I’ve been reading a lot of Dallas Willard’s work over the last year or so. He was a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California who spent much of his life pondering The Four Great Questions: (1) what is reality? (2) who is blessed? (3) who is a really good person? (4) how do you become a really good person? Willard believed that the answer to the first question is “God and his Kingdom.”
If, as Christians believe, God is Love, and if Willard is correct that ultimate reality is “God and his Kingdom,” then love (agape love) is the ultimate reality.
As C.S. Lewis observed in Mere Christianity:
Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.
If love is the ultimate reality, the state of the world shows us that some are living in an alternate, darker reality. Agape love doesn’t mean you have to be a push-over. According to Willard, “the love God wants to create in us is a love that is both tender and fierce.”
It does not appear that Rob Dart is a drug addict or alcoholic. He has family and friends who love him. He even had neighbors who knew his name and were kind enough to share bits of information with his mom and sister who live across the country. Yet he is in the grips of something beyond his control.
Maybe people like Rob Dart are overcome by something unseen, by “powers of this dark world and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Ephesians 6:12. Maybe the separation, loneliness and denial of the small interactions with other human beings that was forced upon us during the lockdowns opened a portal to something sinister. Something demonic.
This is complete conjecture, but what if the mental health crisis in America is actually a spiritual crisis? What if the more disconnected and “artificial” the world becomes the worse the crisis will get? What if the antidote to Schwab’s “angrier world” is to learn how to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to take Lewis’s direction to simply act as if we love our neighbors.