Love your neighbor as yourself; thus God commanded Israel in Leviticus 19:18, and Jesus affirmed the full import of this command in His Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).

But have Christians duly and well represented love of neighbor?

In Neighborliness: Love Like Jesus. Cross Divided Lines. Transform Your Community. (galley received by early review program), David Docusen described his own journey in attempting to prove to be a better neighbor in his part of Charlotte, North Carolina.

He noticed the church plant he had established represented his white, middle-class demographic, and was representative of only about half the area. In this book he describes the commitment to become part of a predominantly Black adjacent neighborhood: the vision for the church, the invariable loss of those who were not in support, the opening of many eyes, and the work done to develop relationships within the new community. The author also described his own journey in terms of local business and non-profit collaboration to accomplish substantive good.

The goal of neighborliness proves excellent; the desire to overcome historic and systemic divisions is commendable.

At the end the author speaks of how he now is attempting to work full-time with a startup non-profit to cultivate and develop this kind of neighborliness. It sort of makes the whole work seem like a kind of advertisement.

My biggest critique would be systemic to the Evangelical Publishing/Industrial Complex: this book makes way too much of the author, and not nearly enough about everyone else involved. I don’t actually think that was the intention of the author. But I have a feeling that if the author did more to focus on others and less on his own journey, the book idea would have received less traction, and may not have sold as well. Katelyn Beaty’s book and observations on the Evangelical celebrity pastor complex seems relevant to this discussion.

But yes, go and prove to be the neighbor to the people around you. Especially those who do not look and act like you.

“Who is my neighbor?”

That is the question the rich young ruler asked Jesus as a means of justifying himself. And in response, Jesus told the story of a very unlikely person being a very unlikely neighbor. For two thousand years, followers of Jesus have been trying to justify themselves by negotiating the meaning of “neighbor,” defining and redefining it until it means the kind of people just like whoever is asking the question. In Neighborliness, David Docusen seeks to rediscover the radical neighboring of Jesus, one that crosses dividing lines and transforms communities.

Part-memoir, part-blueprint, part-conversation, Neighborliness is a practical, insight guide on how to be a good neighbor as both an individual and a community. Docusen is particularly considered about a multi-ethnic, multi-generational community of neighbors, so his immediate focus is on tearing down systems of supremacy and engaging in the hard work of reconciliation and building legacies that are transmitted one generation to the next.

I particularly appreciated the chapter on learning to lament. In the white evangelical church, in particular, the concept of lament has been lost to a theology of celebration. For much of the church, lament is a foreign concept entirely. Most Christians would pay lip service to reconciliation and be actively engaged in trying to create other elements of community, but the idea of lament is a crucial element of engaging with hurting communities. “Mourn with those who mourn,” Scripture says.

Each chapter ends with questions for discussion and reflection. I really like this aspect of the book because it invites community. While you can wrestle through these questions alone, they’re really meant to be worked over with a group, engaging in community as you grow and build community. That is, Neighborliness is part of the process it recommends, encouraging readers to engage in community with others.

Neighborliness is a good start. It’s a beginner’s book in the art of neighboring. There are any number of books that go down deeper when it comes to racial reconciliation, building multi-generational communities, engaging in lament, and so on. Docusen points you in the right direction, giving you the hunger to learn more as you see how implementing this neighborliness of Jesus will impact your communities—both your faith communities and the secular communities in which you reside.

This book covers a lot of important concepts and they are written in a way that made me think about things in a different light. That is something that I love in a non-fiction book. I would recommend this to any Christian who is trying to learn more about social issues in a Jesus-based light. I am looking forward to being able to hopefully listen to this as an audiobook in the future.