Minding our own Business

I was coming back from Zurich in the train. It was a Sunday evening, the train was full, and the only comfortable seat was in a smoking compartment. Fortunately though, I noted, it was a Ruheabteilung - notices warned against the evils of talking, using one's mobile phone, even against using those extraordinarily penetrating earphones that kerthump-kerthump tantalizingly, so that you wish you could hear the other half of the music.

Around me, a couple chatted loudly. Two girls decided to turn on their ghetto-blaster once the ticket inspector had passed through. Needless to say, someone's mobile phone struck up Nokia's version of the Wedding March. The girl opposite me occupied herself with removing the tobacco from a Marlboro and mixing it with some dried green leaves which she extracted from a plastic sachet, before rolling the product into a fresh cigarette.

In fact, none of these things inconvenienced me. I found the music and the conversation both interesting. I had a good book to read. And volenti non fit injuria - if one chooses to sit in a smoking compartment, one cannot complain of the smoke. Anyway, I think I prefer the smell of hemp to the smell of tobacco, and no doubt they are equally carcinogenic.

But the girl opposite worried me. Her trembling hands suggested she was more addicted to her smoking activity than someone who might just indulge casually in burning up a few grammes of cannabis sativa. I began to pray for her.

How difficult it is to pray! "He's made her pregnant. He ought to marry her." "She's left her husband. Isn't it awful?" "She's smoking pot - someone should tell her parents." Behind so many of our prayers lie our own value judgments - our own views on what other people ought to do. And so often we tell God what to do - what we want to happen.

But it is not for us to say what other people "ought to do". It is easy to create rules to say what is "right" and what is "wrong", but often they are too limiting, too legalistic. Christian ethics is not a set of specific rules. It is not about the evils of falsifying our tax returns, or of having sex before marriage. It is about respecting and caring for one's neighbour, and seeking God's will in one's own life.

So ought we perhaps to mind our own business, to turn a blind eye? People sometimes confuse "turning the other cheek" with turning a blind eye to other people's behaviour. But Jesus was quite clear that, although we should put up with injustices done to us, we should help other people who suffer unjustly.

For this is part of "loving one's neighbour", and the parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates dramatically how we cannot turn our back on situations around us where people are getting hurt. We need to keep our eyes open.

But Jesus is equally clear that it is not our job to find solutions. "Before you take out the speck of dust in your brother's eye, take out the plank of wood in your own eye." (Matt 7:3) It is our job to stand by our suffering neighbours, with helping hands outstretched. It is our job to be interested, but not judgmental; supportive but not intrusive.

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock," says God (Rev.3:20), in a touching picture of how much initiative one can take. God knocks at the door of everyone who has a need, and stands, hand outstretched, waiting to help. And God is present and able to help us, too, through prayer, through the hands and works and prayers of our neighbours around us. May we listen for that knock, look to see that hand, and be ready to lean on that support!