Julie and the kids and I went to the zoo in Oklahoma City a couple of weeks ago. If your familiar with Oklahoma City you know that the zoo is just off Martin Luther King street somewhere around about 50th or something. Anyway, as any kid raised in all white small town Oklahoma knows, this part of OKC is the "bad" part of town. I mean there are liquor stores and places to buy wigs and you'd better just scurry on through if you have to go there because your likely to get your Edmond-belonging-in butt robbed.
During this trip we were pondering the possibility of maybe moving to OKC, which is something we would like to do at some point. Of course me being a missionary minded person with a real bad problem stereotyping people (see my previous story about Al the carny) I came to the assumption that maybe we should consider moving into the "hood", because "obviously" this is where they need the gospel the most right? Somewhere in the midst of this thought we drove up upon a KFC where there was a black Baptist church youth group having a car wash for a fund raiser. I thought it would be neat to stop and just see what this neighborhood was like, at least from the vantage point of this fund raiser.
We pulled the van in and handed our keys over to the lady in charge of the car wash. They were very friendly and let us know that we could go in and eat and when we were done eating the car would probably be ready. I stopped for a moment just to watch the people for a while. There were mostly young people (because it was a youth group function) but I noticed that several adults were there as well. It struck me that they all were really enjoying themselves, and seemed to be enjoying each other's company as well. I paid the lady in charge for the car wash and we headed inside to get ourselves some lunch.
The KFC was pretty busy that day, no noubt because of the car wash, so once we got our food we all found a place to sit. After we had taken our seats I noticed that there was only one empty seat left in the restaurant, and it was at our table. Just then another man came in and ordered his food and politely asked if we minded him sitting with us (as opposed to sitting on the floor I guess). He sat down and Evan (my youngest son) immediately sat up and reached for his food, the man thought it was funny. We engaged in some small talk, and I just felt welcome there somehow. We finished our meals and went out to check the status of the car.
When we came out we were again cheerfully greeted and taken to our car where some ladies were putting the finishing touches on the car. The car looked GREAT! I don't think it has ever looked so clean. I thanked them for a great job and started to leave, and upon doing so the church pastor's wife gave me a big hug and thanked us for coming to thier car wash and she told me a bit about the trip their youth group were saving up for.
Once again my sin of stereotyping was blatantly exposed as I realized that not only was the Gospel alive and well in this place, but the people in this neighborhood had something on many of the rest of us, they had a community. I walked away with some thoughts about the "bad" part of town. There are alot of good things about the "bad" part of town. I think they might just know about having and living in a community that is meaningful to them. I think they understand how thier church is a positive aspect adding depth to the relationships of the community. Sure they have problems like higher crime rates and more poverty, but I got to thinking about some stuff.
If you go to Edmond or the "good" part of town where there are nice houses with nice cars, do you experience this kind of community? It's been my experience that most of "middle class white" America live in housing developments where they have really nice stuff but have no idea who their neighbors are. They might have lived there for 20 years and never have met the people around them. When their neighbors die, they aren't sad, when their neighbor's kids get married they aren't happy, they might not even know. Sure there is less violent crime in these neighborhoods, but there has to be...the people never come into contact with each other. So they get a nice clean safe place to live, but they give up being a part of "neighborhood".
Is it possible that part of having that sense of "community" has to come along with some problems like crime? We do still live in a world tainted by sin, and for community to exist people have to be around each other, and interact with each other and get to know each other. This interaction is obviously going to cause some friction, and sometimes bad things will happen when tempers flair and sinful pride erupts. However, is it worth losing the community just to avoid the problems? It's sad that in our prosperity we've allowed our communities to die. It's more even more sad to see people that might live in an actual neighborhood doing everything they can to get to the "good" side of town, and the people on the "good" side of town do everything they can to keep from going to the "bad" side. Seems like both have some things to offer and some things to learn.
I realize that some of the crime stems from problems surrounding poverty or a lack of education, such as those crimes that stem from drug and alcohol abuse, and gang crimes that stem from fractured families. However the good neighborhoods are not immune from these problems. The alcohol or drug abuser on the "good" side of town can simply afford his addiction and he can also afford to keep it behind closed doors. Families are fractured by the drive for prosperity that leaves most middle class kids being raised by childcare employees. And as for education, this doesn't stop crime, it just tends to more sophisticated crime that most would refer to as "white collar crimes".
The point is that living in Edmond "may" be safer than living on "MLK", but at the expense of the richness of a real community with real neighbors. You may feel like you are better off in the newest housing development, but you may just be sacrificing community in order to gain prosperity.
That all being said, here's my test for if you are a good neighbor. If your neighbor were to move or die would you be sad? Here's a challenge, get to know your neighbors, even the dieing old man down the street who can't have but a couple of months left. Get to know him well enough so that when he dies you won't only go to his funeral but you'll also shed a tear. If you can't get your self motivated here's a tip, shut off the cable and the AC and spend your summer evenings on the porch where you might accidentally see another person and get the chance to talk to them.
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, Jesus had to use the illustration of the good Samaritan to explain that our neighbors are anyone around us in need, even those people on the "other" side of town. But before we get to worried about loving the ambiguously imagined person in desparate need, we might want to consider at least finding out the name of the guy that lives 20 feet across the yard.
3 comments:
That's a pretty sad neighborhood you're talking about. I am friends with almost everyone on my block. I don't think anyone is dying at the moment, but maybe you can let me slide on that part... Can't blame me for living on a healthy street.
I do agree that you should practice a sense of community in your community before you try to spread that community to the far reaches of the globe, but does that really mean that I have to turn off my air conditioner? What if I just promise to play with my kid outside once a day?
Let you slide...yeah right, we all know that you are some kind of old person hater. Not hard to live in a neighborhood where no one is dying when you run off everyone under 40...hatemonger...and yes you need to turn off your ac, don't you care about the environment ...earth-hater... why don't you just go out side and play with your kid an keep passing down your vile hatred to the next generation, that'll be just great. And tell all your great ageophopic neighbors hi while your at it.
Besides...don't you live in colorado? not much need for ac there anyway, so you get off easy :)
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