S5E2: Alex Kuykendall on Loving Our Actual Neighbors

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Summary

When Jesus tells us to "love our neighbors," who does he include? And what does loving them look like? Dustin Moody talks with author and podcast host Alex Kuykendall about her latest book, "Loving My Actual Neighbor."

Highlights

On creating our own silos:

"If there's a cultural trend that we are disconnected as people across the country...then that is probably true for each of us in our own individual lives...I had to come to terms with my own echo chamber that I had created."

On the importance of loving our neighbors:

We know that Jesus made it very clear that loving our neighbor after loving God is our number one priority. And so over and over I heard, 'I want to love my neighbor, I just don't know how.'"

On the definition of "neighbor":

"[Jesus] said, 'love the person who's next to you that you maybe didn't choose to live next to you.' We choose a lot of the people that we spend time with. We choose where we go to church, we choose who our friends are. We choose who we're in that texting rotation with who we're in carpool with. And yet we often don't choose who we live next to. I think the same is true for work. We often don't choose who we're sitting next to in the cubicle or on the factory line or in the office...This is the challenge of the Christian life, that we are to love people that we might find challenging."

On rethinking neighborly love:

"When we love our neighbors, we often as Christians think: 'I'm in this position of authority. I'm in this position of righteousness. And when I love my neighbors, I'm giving them a gift.' True, because we are all gifts to each other. But we cannot forget the gift that our neighbors are to us."

Resources

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