As the school year continues, many students, inundated with the wonder and woes of academic life, forget one of the pinnacles of the student experience: the chance to be a good neighbor.
For many, college and post-college life adheres to an egocentric model of the world, when really, it ought to look something like the other-centric model. After four years of life in the dorm, I found that living charitably and intentionally with suitemates often got in the way of the rigorous school and social calendar I tried to maintain…But that’s not how one ought to think and live.
Wherever you are living, it is paramount to behave as a neighbor you would like to have, a “Good Neighbor.” While talks of “Good Neighbors” may evoke images of Mr. Rogers’ kind smile, many of his suggestions for living in community are worthy of consideration. I would like to focus more on a text that is critical for fully understanding living in communion with neighbors and other faithful Christian believers.
A major part of living as a good neighbor involves sharpening the iron of one another, who are hopefully believers, but that sharpening does not necessitate the 2×4 approach when it comes to overcoming challenges, sin, and strife.
Reading Mere Christianity for the first time with my new housemates has really challenged my understanding of living as a good neighbor in a helpful way. Towards the end of the preface, C.S. Lewis offers a picture of the Christian life, focusing mostly on different denominations, in the form of a house.
“I hope no reader will suppose that ‘mere’ Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions–as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into the hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable. It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others feel certain almost at once which door they must knock at. I do not know why there is a difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get into your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise.”
While Lewis’ metaphor is geared more towards the treatment of other Christian denominations, one could extend that beyond to our physical suitmates or neighbors beyond the strictly religious context. For Christians, it is a command to “love thy neighbor as themselves,” a commandment that is so often forgotten amidst the busyness of the everyday.
In closing, Lewis counsels readers to “be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them.”
His recommendations for the believer highlight that there is division in the world, explicitly among Christians, though there is far more of a divide among those who would not consider themself a follower of Christ. If Christians are to work together in a fruitful way, they must come together on the main sources of doctrinal agreement–not neglecting the points of contention–but choosing to put God above self. It is by adopting this modethat we can begin to see the importance of loving and cherishing those who are in our nearest proximate domicile. And if our neighbors happen to be believers of another denomination, or one outside Christianity, they need prayers, and the kindness of their Christian neighbor all the more.
So I’d challenge you to break free of the egocentric mode of thinking that so clearly defines our adolescent development phase, and rather actively love one’s neighbor by helping to lead them closer to the good life, treating them as you would want to be treated.
