I found the op ed piece in today’s NEW YORK TIMES, The Animated Life, to be fascinating. It includes a video made by Jeff Scher, ”a painter who makes experimental films and an experimental filmmaker who paints.” The video is about walking on a crowded city street. Scher writes:
“The street etiquette of
avoiding eye contact
lets us go about our business without
the distraction of interaction.” (emphasis mine)
The “distraction of interaction” - Our lives are full of people we don’t really want to interact with. We sometimes act as if all these people are in fact preventing us from becoming the good or great person we imagine ourselves to be. “I would be such a good Christian if it weren’t for all those people.” Or as one doctor is described in Dostoyevsky’s THE BROTHERS KARAMZOV: he loved humanity, it was people he hated.
Christians like to use the metaphor of walking with Christ as a sign of their own discipleship. Do we however ignore Christian etiquette – say that of the Good Samaritan – in order to avoid the “distraction of interaction”? Do we not know that it is precisely when we walk the streets that we are walking with Christ?
Love can only be practiced when we choose to do so. Love is not a reaction to people, but a chose action toward them.
