I’ve been thinking about how society has shifted to a very anti-gospel way of life.
Years ago we had to interact with our neighbors and the folks we share a community with.
There were micro relationships spread all over town, and those relationships created a larger sense of community along with a built-in moral expectation, because a man’s reputation was important.
The people he dealt with knew him, and how he treated them had something to do with how he was received the next time he walked through the door.
A man who kept his word earned people’s trust over time, and a man who cheated somebody still had to live in the same community with the person he had cheated.
There was an expectation that you would have to face people again, and that gave a man a reason to consider what he was doing.
His name meant something to the folks around him because they had dealt with him enough to know whether he could be trusted.
Today we can go through life never interacting with anyone.
We order our groceries and have them left at our door, with no interaction with the deliverer.
We can get our tags renewed in the mail and schedule package pickups from our front porch.
We order in our takeout food, also left at the door, never greeting the man who brought our food.
Someone has done the shopping or driven across town with our supper, and we can wait until he has pulled away before opening the door.
We have what we need without having to speak to the person who brought it.
In days gone by, when online or over-the-phone payments weren’t an option, the pizza delivery boy whose parents you probably knew collected the payment, made change, and left with a tip.
There was a whole interaction between the young man delivering your pizza and you getting your meal.
You had a few minutes to speak to him while he counted the change, and if he delivered often enough, he became somebody you recognized.
You could ask how his family was doing because you had some connection to the people in his life.
When we do venture into a store, we make a beeline straight for the self-checkout so we don’t have to talk to the cashier.
With each of these changes, another ordinary reason to deal with somebody has disappeared.
We can take care of more and more of our lives without becoming familiar to the people who live and work around us, until we scarcely know the folks in our own community.
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TRADITIONAL BIBLICAL HOMEMAKING
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Even needing to borrow something from a neighbor, perhaps a cup of flour or a stick of butter, gave us a reason to knock on her door.
The exchange of that ingredient would then bring a second visit to the neighbor’s house to deliver a fresh-baked piece of the pie or cake we used it to make.
We had a reason to stand at her door again, thank her, and visit for a few minutes while handing her a plate.
Now we just DoorDash the missing ingredient to our porch, and neither of those visits happens.
Something as ordinary as running out of butter used to bring us into each other’s lives.
These steps have eroded our sense of belonging and community, and they’ve also removed many of the one-on-one interactions where Christians of days gone by had an opportunity to share the gospel, hand out a tract, or personally extend an invitation to church.
Those conversations could begin while someone was waiting for change or talking about what had happened since the last time they saw each other.
There was room to learn that somebody was having a hard time, ask about his family, and take an interest that continued when they met again.
That matters when we consider what we have been told to do in the Great Commission as Christians.
We have a gospel to share with people, and so many of the small occasions for speaking to them have been taken out of daily life.
We can spend our time with our families and church friends while knowing almost nothing about the people around us.
We still believe they need the Lord, but we have so little contact with them that we never get around to saying anything about Him.
I think we need to consider the part we are taking in this.
If we keep choosing whatever allows us to avoid a conversation, we are helping remove the opportunities we say we want.
We need to be willing to talk to the cashier and get to know our neighbors, with enough interest in their lives to remember what they tell us.
Giving someone a tract or inviting them to church may feel awkward, especially when we have grown accustomed to keeping to ourselves, but avoiding them leaves us with no conversation at all.
The people in our community still need the gospel, and we have to be willing to deal with them long enough to share it.
How can we reach a world we never touch?
Biblical Womanhood
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