John:
I'm here today with Andrew DeCort. Andrew is the founder of the Neighbor Love movement, and author of the book Bonhoeffer’s New Beginning: Ethics after Devastation. He holds a PhD in ethics from the University of Chicago and has taught courses in theology and ethics at Wheaton College, the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology, and the university of Bonn.
And I can also confess, although maybe this confession is more of a humble brag, that Andrew is my friend. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Andrew:
John, thanks so much for your hospitality. I'm really, really grateful to be here with you.
John:
Now, I know your writing has been heavily shaped by your experiences in Ethiopia. When did you first go to Ethiopia, and what were you doing there?
Andrew:
Yes. I love Ethiopia. Ethiopia is an extremely important place for me. It's my second home. It's the home of my wife, Lily. I first went to Ethiopia in 2004. I was a university student at the time, and I interned at a place called the Mercy Center in Addis Ababa. It was basically a social center for women and children struggling with poverty. In Addis, there were vocational training programs, basically job creation programs, feeding programs, some educational programs for children.
And I worked there for about two months, and my experience there really showed me the incredible dignity of Ethiopian people, incredible resilience and faith in the face of struggle and hardship. And it profoundly connected several of my deepest passions, John: deep faith in God, a passion for serving others, and theological education.
I was privileged to teach a short course that summer at a place called the Addis Ababa Bible College. So it was this kind of perfect storm of faith, service, education, and also culture and history. I was able to travel outside of Ethiopia in 2004, and I just got to see some of the extraordinary architecture, iconography, history, and theology of the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church and was just extremely impressed by the richness and complexity and vitality of that ancient, ancient church.
So 2004 was a deeply formative experience for me and was the entryway for Ethiopia really becoming essential to who I've become and to my life and home for the last almost 17 years.
John:
Wow. So you finished up at Wheaton, right? And then what happened after that?
Andrew:
Yeah. So after I finished at Wheaton, my Ethiopian mentor invited me to return to Addis to help start a church in the city called Beza, which means redemption. This was another extremely formative year for me, John.
Just days after I arrived back in Addis at the end of October, 2005, there were massive protests in the city in response to a federal election that had taken place in May. Many people argued that the election had been stolen or that there were irregularities and that the election could not be trusted. And in response to these protests, the government basically opened fire on crowds of people, and 193 people were killed at that time. And I remember, John, sitting in the small room where I was staying. It was called Little Mogadishu. It was in a part of Addis Ababa that had many Somali refugees. And I could hear the machine gunfire rattling in my room. And it was this real first, raw encounter with political violence and the recognition that people are probably dying, people are dying from those bullets that I'm hearing coming out of those machine guns right now. And I remember, or, in the wake of that event, walking around the city and seeing pickup trucks with machine guns mounted to their roofs, the city was a ghost town, everyone was trying to stay out of the streets out of public spaces.
And after that event, you know, I was talking with everyone that I could, shop owners, just kids in the neighborhood, spiritual leaders, business people, asking them what's just happened and what do you think about it. And the prevailing sense was incredible grief, incredible fear, incredible anger, and the sense was that the body politic had basically just been ripped apart by this moment of high hopes for a kind of democratic participation in the future of Ethiopia that had turned into this event of mass death and fear. And that really got me thinking deeply about what is the relationship between Christian faith and public responsibility.
I observed at that time that very, very few of the churches in Ethiopia responded to the situation or said really anything about it. There was a silence in response to this death, this grief, this trauma that had deeply wounded the Ethiopian community. And to its credit, I think the Catholic Church was the only church in Ethiopia that released a public statement. So that second year in Ethiopia was filled with the excitement of this new church community that was growing, but also this incredible heaviness of this political atrocity that took place right in the city and started really fueling these questions for me. What is the connection between being a follower of Jesus and being a citizen, of having a deep faith in God and having a deep sense of responsibility for human flourishing, of caring about human salvation and justice for the community and our common good, the blood of Christ shed on the cross and the blood of our neighbors shed in our streets?
So this was another very, very formative year for me, John.
John:
Following this, you decided to go continue in your studies, right? And what pushed you to, to study more, rather than some other activity that you could have done?
Andrew:
Yes. I think that the questions that emerged from my experiences in Ethiopia really fueled my graduate education at the University of Chicago. First of all, I just wanted to go deeper in the Christian traditions, thinking on public life and politics in particular. I had a tremendous education at Wheaton College, but at that time, Wheaton really gave very few, if any, courses focused on the Christian tradition’s thinking on politics and public life. It was a big hole and a big blind spot, which thankfully Wheaton has filled since then.
But I wanted to go to U Chicago and study with people like Jean Elshtain, William Schweiker, and others to try to understand, what have Christian thinkers and other thinkers, not just Christian thinkers, Jewish thinkers, secular thinkers, Muslim thinkers, and others, what have they thought about the meaning of justice, about the relationship of God in the world of faith and public life? For my future, that was a larger question. And then I think the more specific question, John, which ended up shaping my first book was, how do we start over after devastation? How do we begin again, after it feels like things have come to a traumatic end? And again, that was really fueled by what I witnessed in 2005. It was also fueled by some of my own personal experiences, of rejection, of deaths, of seeing relationships fall apart, and asking, how do we start over when it seems like everything is lost and there's no more hope? And so, in some ways, this question that ended up forming the heart of my research was deeply philosophical, deeply political, but it was also deeply, deeply personal and spiritual for me as well.
John:
I feel like that's the way all good writing comes about, right?
Andrew:
Yes.
John:
We're embodied creatures.
Andrew:
Yes we are.
John:
Not just brains in a vat.
So another thinker that was, another mentor of yours that you didn't mention was Don Levine, right? How does his mentorship fit in to this formation also?
Andrew:
Professor Levine. Gosh, Don. He's known with various names in the Ethiopian and academic community. I loved and still love Donald Levine. He was my mentor at Ethiopian studies, and he's a reminder of the grace and generosity of God.
When I enrolled at the University of Chicago, I didn't know who he was and I—it's a real blessing, John. Because I had received this presidential fellowship from Harvard and I felt this strong desire to go to the University of Chicago. It was my dream school because of its focus on interdisciplinarity and just rigorous thinking, rigorous research. So I went to U Chicago, and then I Googled “Ethiopia U Chicago,” and Professor Levine's profile popped up. And I sent him an email, and Don of course was extremely hospitable and welcoming. He encouraged me to come to his office. And I met him, and when he heard about my experiences in Ethiopia, my love for Ethiopia, he invited me really to come under his wing and learn from him.
And Don was one of the most brilliant sociologists of Ethiopia in the 20th century and into the early 21st century. And so I took one-on-one tutorials with Don. We, we did this kind of crash course in Ethiopian history, and I was privileged to edit his last book on Ethiopia, which was called Interpreting Ethiopia.
And so Don became my mentor, John, in Ethiopian studies. He introduced me to key traditions, key questions, key thinkers, key scholars. He modeled an extraordinary discipline in loving and respecting Ethiopians and not presuming to talk down to Ethiopians, but being a listener who combined rigorous thought and research with a very humble and very self-aware and self-critical posture towards his own scholarship. So I was deeply grateful for that.
And Don also helped me start thinking about how Pentecostalism may or may not be shaping public life, social life in Ethiopia. Don and I originally started talking about doing a dissertation project. I think it was going to be called something like “The Pente Ethic and the Spirit of Modernity.” I was going to be kind of looking at some of Max Weber's analysis of Protestantism, but looking at them in the Ethiopian context, and rather than just looking at Protestantism, looking at Pentecostalism in particular. And Don also introduced me to this tradition of sacral kingship in Ethiopia, this idea that the king is the son of God and divinely authorized to rule the land with unquestionable authority, which was the kind of seedbed political culture of the ancient Ethiopian Northern Axumite tradition.
And to this day, sacral kingship becomes a really important part of how I think about political culture in Ethiopia. So Don has been just a monumental teacher. I don't think that he, I don't think that his interpretation of Ethiopia was faultless or was comprehensive, as no scholar is, but tremendous respect and affection for Don's mentorship. And I miss him dearly.
John:
Thank you. Now let's turn to the book, because that's been on my mind a lot. Why Bonhoeffer? What does Bonhoeffer bring to the table?
Andrew:
Yeah. So this, the book is about the question, how do we make new beginnings in the face of devastation? And for me, that's a question of radical hope. When we think that everything has fallen apart, when we, when we think that, when we're tempted to think that life is no longer worth loving, that life is no longer worth living because it has been brutalized with so much atrocity, with so much horror, with so much incredible loss, the question of new beginnings really becomes a question of, how do we live another day? How do we start over and move towards a new future?
And Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a man who lived through the devastating events of the first half of the 20th century. He was definitely a privileged German man from a very well-positioned family. His father was a famous professor in Germany. But he lost a brother in the first world war. He was keenly attuned to the violence and suffering and Europe and in Germany, the economic recession, the cultural humiliation, the sense of incredible loss insecurity, fear for what's next.
And then Bonhoeffer was someone who paid attention to the rise of Adolf Hitler from the very beginning. Bonhoeffer was one of the first Christians and Christian theologians, Christian professors in Germany, who critically spoke about Hitler and warned against Hitler's mis-leadership and the way that Hitler would take the German society towards violence and lies and destruction. And Bonhoeffer paid for that dearly. Eventually his writing was banned, and then he was banned from traveling in Germany, and then he was essentially under house arrest. And then of course he was arrested by the Gestapo, and he was in prison for two years and finally hanged in April 1945, right before the end of the war.
So Bonhoeffer was a man who looked deeply and courageously in the face of devastation. And yet he was a man who embodied and expressed a tremendous hope in God, a tremendous hope for the human capacity to love, and a tremendous hope for the possibilities of new futures in the Christian community and just in the community of the world. So Bonhoeffer for me was a very powerful and prophetic thinker to guide me into the questions of, how do we make new beginnings after we've been devastated?
John:
So how do we make new beginnings after we've been devastated? Could you give us just the key little bit?
Andrew:
Yes, of course. It's a complex question, and the book is all about it, but I think the most basic response, John, that I gleaned from Bonhoeffer and that I believe personally is paradoxical: we make new beginnings by facing the reality that we don't know how to make beginnings on our own, that we don't have the full power and capacity to make beginnings on our own. It's when we think that we know how to make new beginnings, it's when we think that we have the ability to force our new beginnings onto the world, that we're in deep danger of a kind of pride that is blinding and a force that becomes violent, that leads to the ruptures and the wounding and the death, that makes us crave new beginning so desperately.
So Bonhoeffer's ethics of new beginnings begins in this radical humility that says we don't know how to begin on our own, we don't have the power to begin on our own, so we need to begin with a posture of radical self-transcendence, of awaiting upon, responding to, and welcoming otherness. And for Bonhoeffer, this is the otherness of God. God is the creator. God is not our tool. God is not our mascot. God is not our reflection or our projection. God is transcendent above us. And this, also, this openness is also to the neighbor. You're not somebody that I can crawl into your skin and know what you're thinking, and control who you are and dominate your personhood. You are another you who speaks and acts in relationship to me. And our relationship needs to be one of dialogue and mutual respect. Bonhoeffer has this powerful line in one of his letters from prison, towards the end of his life, where he says “The transcendent is not the infinite unattainable task. The transcendent is the neighbor within reach in any given situation.”
So Bonhoeffer thinks that new beginnings start with this openness to transcendence, which means that I'm surrendering the sufficiency and totality of my own self to become open to God, to become open to others. And this means that I'm in a posture of humility. I'm in a posture of listening. I'm in a posture of self critique and openness to my own mistakes, blind spots, failures, prejudices.
And so in the book, I talked specifically about six practices that Bonhoeffer talks about for how we can begin again. Baptism: it's this it's this foundational event where we say, “I need to start over.” Bonhoeffer talks about how every Christian who was baptized should become an opponent of racism, for example, because we've washed away the ideologies that shape our humanity in this world, hungry for power, and we have entered into a new birth where we see each and every person as a child of God. Bonhoeffer has this really powerful line about how if Christians in America had taken their baptism seriously, they would have never been able to accept slavery, because they would have seen it as an abomination against their baptism that says God has created and wants to save each and every person, regardless of the color of their skin. I also talk about prayer and Bonhoeffer, and really prayer is not just talking to God for Bonhoeffer, prayer is primarily listening to God. And again, having this attunement that goes beyond my own thoughts and feelings and desires, to stop, wait, and listen to say, what is the will of God for our world right now? There's several other practices that I impart, John, but the heart of new beginnings for Bonhoeffer is really stopping and surrendering our drive to be the beginner, and say, no, let God who creates others, who saves others, who promises resurrection for others, let God go first. We follow after God in the person of Jesus. And we become respondents who welcome others, who wait upon others, who embrace responsibility and relationship to others. And that's how we discover a shared new beginning.
John:
Wow. Seems like there's some very strong Lutheran valences there, right?
Andrew:
Yes, for sure.
John:
So a lot of people have been making comparisons to mid-century Germany. Politicians are often compared to Germany—or to Hitler. Way back in Seinfeld, we had the soup Nazi, though maybe that's something completely different. But as a Bonhoeffer scholar, when you hear all these references to the Nazis and to Nazi Germany, what do you make of that, as we think about our moral and our political discourse?
Andrew:
Yes, John, it's an important question. I hear lots of people making comparisons to the present moment and to Nazi Germany. I see it in the United States. I see it in Ethiopia. Just this week, officials in Ethiopia have compared some Ethiopians to the Nazis.
The first thing that I would say, John, is that we live in a time of exaggeration, that loves drama and sensationalism. And I would urge us all to be patient and to resist this desire to inflate and to exaggerate. We need to keep in mind that Nazi Germany was a regime that invaded and conquered neighboring countries, it was a regime that systematically persecuted, ghettoed, and executed at least 6 million Jews, black Europeans, gay people and others. I'm not sure that we've seen anything approaching this level of aggression and raw dehumanization to the point of systematic mass execution. So we ought to be careful not to exaggerate and sensationalize by saying, well, that's, that's Nazi.
At the same time, John, I would say that there were trends in Nazi Germany that we should be mindful of today. We saw an increasing suspicion of the media environment in Germany, where books are being burned, where people who ask questions are being seen as traitors and disloyal to the party, where Christians who are questioning the leader and questioning the leader’s agenda, again, are seen as disloyal, traitorous, against the will of God. We saw very strong theology emerging in Nazi Germany where whatever the leader said, whatever Hitler said, must be the will of God. If it wasn't the will of God, why would he be there, why would he say that? We need to obey. And we also saw in Nazi Germany this incredible trend towards othering. Those people are the cause of our humiliation. Those people are the cause of our political defeat. Those people are the cause of our economic hardship. Of course, mainly it was Jews. And you had these incredibly powerful enemy images that were emerging in Germany of the Jews as rats, or as demons, or as other subhuman or unhuman creatures or beings. And this othering led to the dehumanization that was the gateway for people not caring when their Jewish neighbors and other neighbors were annihilated.
And I would say that in the United States, we are seeing some similar patterns of increasing othering, increasing dehumanization of people who disagree with us, and increasing emphasis that the political leader must be the representative of the will of God, and an increasing desire to kind of blame and scapegoat others. The way that we don't, the reason why we don't feel great, or secure, or rich, or whatever, is because, pick your group. It could be immigrants. It could be. A certain religious group. It could be a certain social group. They're the problem.
So I would say John, in some, we need to be very, very careful to avoid exaggeration and sensationalism. These are problems in our age that are creating this addiction to drama and ever-increasing spectacle, which is what we see driving cable news. But at the same time, we should be very, very alert and sober about similar trends that we saw in the 1930s in Germany and that we see today, of this increasing trust in the leader and an unquestioning allegiance, and loyalty to the leader, of othering that can lead to dehumanization, scapegoating blaming, and this kind of hardening of community that makes the possibility of asking questions and crossing boundaries more and more difficult and more and more costly for people who inhabit those communities.
John:
So there's some real culture building work left to be done right here.
Andrew:
Yes.
John:
Now, usually academics have a certain path that they follow, right? You finish your dissertation. You go on, you get a tenured academic position and you teach and you write, or maybe these days increasingly you wallow in adjunct misery until you become comfortable doing something else, like selling used cars. But you chose a completely different path. Right from the beginning, you had a direction. Can you tell us about, about what you you've done?
Andrew:
Yes. So when Bonhoeffer talks about making new beginnings, John, he really talks about it in terms of being with, and for others being with, and for others, Bonhoeffer describes the community. Of Jesus as the community that's for others. he describes this as the new life and being there for others.
And when Lily and I were wrapping up the season of education at the University of Chicago, we were really praying and discerning what God would have next for us. And we really felt like we were called to return to Ethiopia and to contribute to contribute to theology and practice that would serve neighbor-love. And so for two years, I worked at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology as a professor of theology and ethics, and was teaching Ethiopian pastors and leaders, and helping develop a PhD program there and a public program in public theology.
But as we increasingly saw, the social crisis escalating in Ethiopia, states of emergency, increasing killings, increasing arrests; increasing fears of societal breakdowns, civil war, even possibilities of genocide. We really felt a sense of responsibility that we needed to be with and for others in a wider way, in a way that would engage more people outside of the kind of academic island and Christian island. So about a year ago, with my colleague, Dr. Tekalign Nega, we started Balinjeraye, or the neighbor-love movement. And the mission of the neighbor-love movement is to inspire young Ethiopians to see and treat others as their neighbors in the face of increasing othering, John. And so what we're doing is we're traveling around the country, we're going to Ethiopian universities, we're engaging various platforms that could be civil society organizations, churches, mosques, government organizations, schools, and we're inviting young people to become ambassadors of neighbor-love. And what that means is that they sign a simple covenant that says “Today, I covenant to love my neighbor as myself. Every woman, man, and child is my neighbor, across every boundary and identity. I choose to see and treat my neighbor with value, respect, and practical compassion. Today I say yes, I am an ambassador of neighbor-love.”
And then John, that covenant gets embodied through seven practices. As you said, we're not brains in a vat; we're embodied creatures. And so we say that neighbor love gets embodied. It gets lived in our bodies through these seven practices. The first is our eyes and choosing to literally see the other person as our neighbor, rather than overlooking them or invisiblizing them. The second is our mouth speaking to our neighbors with value and respect and truth, and being willing to ask forgiveness when we harm or make mistakes. And that's connected to a resistance to condemning labeling, cursing the other. The third is our ears. Listening with patience. Even when we disagree, refusing to close our ears and only [live] in our own perspective.
The fifth is our hands reaching out and serving others with our power and refusing to use our hands as a source of harm to others. The sixth is our feet moving closer to people that are different than us and building bridges with them, rather than only staying in our community where everyone thinks and feels like ourselves. And the seventh is our brain choosing to live an integrated life where we remarry what we believe with how we behave, where we reconnect our values with our lifestyle. And so we go to Ethiopian youth all over the country, on social media, and we challenge them to sign this covenant, to commit to these seven practices, and to become an ambassador of neighbor-love in their community.
And John, we define neighbor-love simply as passionate will and practical work for the other's wellbeing. That's what neighbor-love is. It's not fuzzy feelings and happy thoughts. It's passionate will and practical work for the other person's wellbeing. And this we believe can help heal some of the deep, deep religious, ethnic, and political tensions that are threatening Ethiopia today. It begins with seeing the precious value of the other person as a neighbor. That's why we have a diamond in our logo. It represents that the other person, in all of their complexity, in all of their difference, is precious and valuable.
And so John, when I thought about my vocation as an ethicist, I didn't feel like I could make a new beginning and be with and for others in the way that I felt called to simply in the classroom and in the safety and security of an academic institution. And that's why the neighbor-love movement is public. It reaches out to every constituency in Ethiopia and it's intending to see, to encourage us to see every person as a neighbor who has value and should be seen and treated with respect.
John:
So one of the, one of the key themes here is an approach to diversity, right? Many people see diversity as a threat to solidarity. And instead, it seems not only that you want to say it's not a threat, but also that it could potentially be an asset. How do we understand diversity properly?
Andrew:
It's such an important question, John. Thank you. I've written an article for an Ethiopian news platform called “Unity and Diversity Are Neighbors, And So Are We.” And the argument there is that unity and diversity are mutually dependent concepts that need each other to actually make sense. So unity without diversity is simply sameness or uniformity. And there's actually nothing to unify. Unity implies that there's a multiplicity that's being joined together. And diversity without unity also destroys itself, because diversity without unity is just fragmentation or alienation. It's a random collection of shards. So diversity in order for it to be itself, needs some kind of unity.
And the argument that the neighbor-love movement is making is that unity doesn't need to be oppression and sameness, and diversity doesn't need to be conflict and isolation or divorce, but the two actually need each other. And I think that this is deeply rooted in a rich theology of creation, that God in God's infinite wisdom, infinite goodness, infinite character, has created us each in God's image. And that means that none of us will be reduceable to the same. And again, that takes me back to our diamond logo. That diamond is meant to represent the precious value, but also the complexity and depth and dimensionality of each human person in each human community. If God wanted us to be all the same, then we wouldn't have been made in God's image, because God's image is full of this infinite richness and complexity and depth. And then when we get to the very end of the Bible, it promises that every language and tribe and nation and people will join together in the song of the lamb. So again, you have this fascinating coming together of diversity. It doesn't say that the languages and the nationalities will go away. It says every one of them will be there, but it says they'll join together in a shared song. And so from beginning to end, I think the Bible is pushing us towards this vision of unity and diversity as neighbors.
And I think what binds us together, John, is these shared values. The other person matters. The other person has precious value. The other person is made in the image of God. And this generates shared practices. I'm going to use my body to love and serve you. And I expect you to do the same with me and for us to do this together for the common good in our community. But that doesn't mean that we're going to all end up thinking and feeling and believing the same way. And that's where we remain open and humble to discern and to peacefully disagree in a democratic context under the rule of law. So unity and diversity are neighbors and they need each other for them to be meaningful. A society where you only have unity, I think, becomes increasingly boring and oppressive. And a society where you only have diversity becomes increasingly incoherent and conflictual. So we're trying to remarry these, John.
John:
Yeah, I'm with you 100%. I have a couple followup questions on this because this is very rich, very rich. How do you read the tower of Babel narrative? Because that might be something somebody would point to and say, well, what about this.
Andrew:
Yes. That's a very, very important narrative in the Bible, John. So John is referring to, after creation, there's this event where human beings try to build this tower to the sky, to reach the gods. And what God does is God comes down and scatters them so they're no longer able to build this kind of titanic tower that would capture the gods and their power for human agendas.
The first thing that I'd like to say, John, is that if you read the text of Genesis, there is already a diversity of languages and people there. It's not like a diversity of languages appears with the tower of Babel and a diversity of people appears with the tower of Babel. Go back and read the text! The diversity of language and peoples is already in the book of Genesis before we get to the tower of Babel, the scattering that takes place seems to be their inability to understand each other and to cooperate with one another, which God, again, does as a way to resist the human drive to try to capture God's as tools for power. So in some ways, you know, the tower of Babel is the first kind of mass technology project to harness power for human agendas. And God says, no, that's not going to help. Embrace your finitude. Don't try to transcend your finitude through some kind of building project that will somehow give you access to divine power.
But what I'd like to jump ahead to the book of Acts, John, where the narrative of Pentecost is explicitly a response to the tower of Babel and a healing of the tower of Babel. But how does the healing take place? It's not that the people were gathered together in Jerusalem, suddenly begin to speak the same language. Instead, the historian Luke says that all the nations and peoples who were gathered together in Jerusalem at Pentecost are speaking their own languages, but the spirit of God is enabling them to understand one another. So the healing of Babel is not a reduction of diversity. It's not a cessation of diversity. It's an affirmation of diversity, but within the context of understanding and community. It says that they were all singing the praises of God together, and that they were able to understand one another, and that they were astonished by this miracle.
So the tower of Babel narrative is extremely important. And what it doesn't say is that diversity is a reflection of sin, or evil, or God's judgment. What it says is that God-given diversity needs to be healed so that we can understand and cooperate with one another in a community that is self-giving. Remember in Acts it says that each was sharing with the other so that there was no needy among them. So yes, this is my short response.
John:
Thank you. Thank you. And then another one. And this is something a lot of people are worried about in places where there's, there's a lot of social change, right? People are worried about preserving their culture. I mean, we could look at a place like Germany, where there's a lot of immigration, right? And they say, well, Berlin is not Berlin anymore. Although nobody's really complaining about currywurst. So there's all these good things that come too, but people worry about the loss of a culture. And is there a way within this framework where we can say it's great to preserve something? I mean, it seems like there is, but how might you enflesh that?
Andrew:
Yes, John, I would ask a question: do we want to be Christians or do we want to be nationalists? Do we want to be Christians or do we want to be nationalists? When we read the Bible, we discover a God who has a radical, courageous, creative passion for new beginnings. In the beginning, God creates the heavens and the earth. Christians believe that God is perfect. God wasn't bored. God wasn't lonely. God wasn't looking for something to do. Creation was an act of radical divine love to welcome the other, the nobody, the non-existent into being and say, share this world with me. I want to be God with and for humans and animals and butterflies and trees. This was a radical new beginning.
Look at the life of Jesus. Christians believe that Jesus was the incarnation of God. John says “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” God makes the radical new beginning of not only creating human beings but becoming one of us in the mystery of the Trinity, entering into human flesh. Why? For the purpose of embracing enemies, those who said we would prefer to be human without you. We would prefer to see this world as our own. We don't need you. And God says, how am I going to respond? Well, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.” So this is a new beginning that no one could ever have guessed or anticipated.
The resurrection is the third and most radical new beginning in Christian theology. God loves the dead. God loves the expired. God loves the dust. And he says, I want to give you new life, new beginning. So what we see is coherence in the person of God. There's this radical love of the other that grounds who God is, but we see this ever increasing innovation and innovation in the person of God to create the world with and for others, to give God's life in Jesus for enemies so that we could be reconciled and healed, to resurrect the dead so that we could inhabit a new heavens and a new earth where every language, tribe and person is gathered in community.
Do we want to be Christians—which that's what it means to be a Christian, is to say yes to that divine love—or do we want to be nationalists, who say, this is our country, this is our race, this is our culture, and we never want it to change. And we heard, John, we heard the essence of nationalism in Charlottesville a few years ago. You will not replace us. You will not replace us. This is the ideology of saying what we have made must remain untouchable and look like ourselves. And that is the ideology of the tower of Babel. And that is the project that God scatters and says no to. And so is Berlin, Berlin? Is Chicago, Chicago? Is Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa? Well, I would say those are very complex questions, but a thriving community is a community that is growing in its embrace of others, and is being enriched in its hospitality towards diversity, and the community is becoming a larger family in food, in music, in architecture, in the way that people are loving and serving one another across boundaries that heal injustice. So, I think a question facing many of us is, do we want a truly self-transcendent life connected to God? Or do we want this kind of unchanging, self-defending, self-glorifying nationalism that says, “We are this and can only be this, and if you're something else there's no place for you”?
John:
Wow. That's a stark choice. Now, if we were to look at Ethiopia right now—I've seen some news reports—could you tell me what's going on there and how are you intervening in that conflict?
Andrew:
Yes, as I said, Ethiopia is a rich country, John. It's a beautiful country with an ancient history, with an incredibly diverse community. There's over 80 linguistic and ethnic groups in Ethiopia. And this is a country that's going through serious social and political transition, especially since 2018, when prime minister Abiy came to power after the previous prime minister resigned in the wake of sustained public protests. And what we've been seeing in the last week is a military intervention of the federal government into the northern region of Ethiopia called Tigray. And the government is stating that this was done in response to several actions of the ruling party in that region. One was attacking a military base. Another was holding an illegal election. Another was not receiving a federal military personnel to assume office in the region. So there is the fraught conflict. And what we're seeing now is air bombings in the northern region of Ethiopia by the federal government. And we're receiving reports of hundreds of people being killed already, and of thousands of people fleeing into bordering countries, seeking shelter and safety.
So Ethiopia is in a very fraught situation right now. The United States Institute of Peace just wrote a few days ago that war in Ethiopia could represent the largest state collapse in modern history and that the ensuing conflict in Ethiopia could make the crises in Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan, and Somalia be overshadowed by comparison. So we're looking at a very grave and extremely serious situation, John, that requires extraordinary leadership on all sides and on behalf of all constituencies seeking dialogue. And this is what the neighbor-love movement is seeking to advocate. We've released the statement. It's called “The Joint Declaration for Human Value and Nonviolence in Ethiopia,” John. This statement has been signed by over 200 Ethiopian leaders in the faith communities and civil society, in the media, in public leadership. And this document affirms the value of human life through the lens of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Christian tradition, the Koran and the prophet Muhammad, and the democratic constitution of Ethiopia itself. It condemns the escalation of violence and warns against our concern that the patterns of othering and violence in Ethiopia could easily lead to a spiral of increasing violence that could quickly get out of control and lead to catastrophic damage. And it calls upon all concerned parties to commit themselves to nonviolence. And to work together for the sake of shared dialogue, to find negotiating pathways to a new future in Ethiopia. So your listeners can find this statement at nlmglobal.org. They can sign it there.
But this is our primary statement in response to the escalating conflict in Ethiopia. Affirm human value. No matter who you are, no matter what religion you are, no matter what ethnic identity you embrace, no matter what political party or platform you support, see and embrace the value of human life and resist the urge to violence. Commit to non-violence. So that's the primary response, John, but of course all of our work is meant to nurture a culture where war is rejected and where peace can be nurtured.
John:
Thank you. Now I realize listeners may miss part of what you're doing, because there's these big grand things, right? The big global conflict or, you know, the potential civil war. But you also talk about these, these smaller things, right? These encounters with individuals, who are often not seen. And I know this was part of the founding of your organization. You mentioned three people in particular. Could you tell us about them?
Andrew:
Absolutely. Yes, John, the neighbor-love movement was not born out of ideas. It was not really born out of some kind of grand agenda. It was born out of encounter with individual persons and a recognition of their precious value. So we talk about three honorary founders of the neighbor-love movement. The first is named Wudenesh. I met her many years ago on the streets of Addis Ababa. I was working, as I mentioned, as a pastor. At the time, I had committed to walking to my office every day rather than taking taxis, so that I could save money and buy meals for street children on my way to and from my office. And this is how I met Wudenesh.
She was a little girl. She was probably six or seven, who would work after dark selling tissues on the streets. She was disabled, so she'd walk with a crutch. And I was just extremely alarmed that this little girl was working after dark, disabled. She wouldn't be able to run away if she was attacked or harassed. And so I eventually asked, Wudenesh, would you take me to where you live and just introduce me to your parents? I would like to get to know your family. And she did that, and I got to know Wudenesh’s family, John, her mom and dad and er siblings. And I discovered an incredible family that was battling with a history of deep loss and with incredible poverty. Her dad was HIV positive. Her mother was trying to support the family by baking injera. Her family was struggling to send them to school. And that's why Wudenesh was out on the street, working at night. And we made a deal with her family that if Wudenesh would stop working on the street, that we would partner with them financially to help them save their home, they were having some eviction problems, and to help send Wudenesh to private school. Because she was very gifted at school. She had gotten good marks in school. But she wanted to go to a private school where she would have a better chance of fulfilling her dream of going to university and helping lift her family out of poverty.
And today Wudenesh is a student at Addis Ababa University. She's pursuing her university education. Lily and I spend many holidays with her family. Many, many of my students at Wheaton College, at Bonn, at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology, have spent time at Wudenesh’s home. So we have grown in relationship, and I've observed that neighbor that we were tempted to overlook on the street is precious.
And actually, John, Wudenesh’s name and Amharic means “you are precious.” That's the name, that's the meaning of the translation of Wudenesh. And really the neighbor-love movement started out of, what if we saw Wudenesh as precious, not as this, street girl to be overlooked, not just as someone to buy a pack of tissues from, but someone to build a relationship with and to support in her journey of chasing her dream?
The second person, John was a young boy named Eyob. I met him on the streets Addis Ababa begging for help. He asked me if I would give him money. I said no. He turned around and walked away. He was wearing a hood, and his hood fell off. And I saw that he had this horrific wound on the back of his head, John. Eyob, whose name means Job, had fallen in a cooking fire as a small child in rural Ethiopia. And his parents had sent him to the capital city to beg for help or to die. And so Eyob and I developed this relationship, and my friends and I took him to the best local hospital and we fought for his life. And what we discovered was that Eyob was not some kind of pitiful victim. He was this incredible witness of hope of generosity, of courage, of faith in God and love for his neighbor. Eyob’s dream was to become a pastor and professor who would give hope to suffering people in Ethiopia.
And unfortunately, John, after many, many procedures and operations, the cancer had so spread throughout Eyob’s head that we weren't able to save him. And so the doctor asked us to take him back to his family and to let him die a peaceful life with his family. And that's what we did. And Eyob passed away in early 2011. It's coming up on the 10th anniversary of Eyob’s life. And we observed, what if Eyob had been seen as a precious diamond sooner? What if he would have been taken to a hospital years before to receive the procedures that he needed? Eyob would still be alive today. Eyob would be training to become a pastor and professor today, who would be giving hope and healing to suffering people in Ethiopia. So again, when we see that diamond in our logo, John, we're seeing Eyob, and that encounter with Eyob, and that call to open our eyes, to move our feet, to extend our hands, to open our heart, to see and treat that other, that person in suffering, that person with an ugly wound, as our precious neighbor.
And the third honorary founder of the neighbor-love movement is a young woman in far-Eastern Ethiopia named Ferdosa. Ferdosa, I met her in the city hall of the Regents Capitol, just almost exactly two years ago, when I was invited to speak there to a group of young leaders at city hall. In a nearby city, John, ethnic cleansing was taking place. Youth were going door to door, telling minorities, get out or we're going to kill you. When I was driving through the city that day, John, I saw a huge tent, huge tents, fenced off for internally displaced people who had fled from their community to seek shelter. And so when I went to city hall that day, I challenged these young leaders to love their enemies. And after that talk, John, a young woman named Ferdosa, in a hijab, came up to me. And she said, Dr. Andrew, I have never loved my enemies before. And no one has ever told me to love my enemies before. Starting today, I will love my enemies, and I will teach others to love their enemies. And she grabbed my hand, John, and she raised it up, and we took a picture. You can see it on our website. And it was like she was making a covenant with me to say, this day is a new beginning, where I'm going to see and treat enemies as people who have value, I'm going to love them.
And that's really the heart of the neighbor-love movement, John. We want to travel Ethiopia, physically and online, on social media, through video conferences and video events, and to recruit people like Ferdosa to say, you can love your enemies, and this love can heal the community, and that can prevent the catastrophe that we're seeing unfolding. So neighbor-love really begins with these encounters with people, John, and seeing their value, whether it's a street girl working late at night, whether it's a young boy with a head wound, or whether it's a young woman in city hall, listening to a lecture who's inspired to embrace the other with a new love. This is the heart of the neighbor-love movement.
John:
Well, I know I am feeling convicted, and I imagine listeners will too. And they'll want to be thinking about how to incarnate this and to have a new beginning themselves, right? I know you offer a course, an online course, “Neighbor-love.” Could you tell us just a little bit about this course?
Andrew:
Yes. So, John, neighbor love is an eight-hour video course. It has seven lectures, and each of the lectures is broken up into a five-minute section. So it's meant to be super digestible. And it takes the viewer through the history of neighbor-love in the Christian tradition in particular. So we go, I go through every text in the Hebrew Bible that talks about neighbor-love. I go through every text in the New Testament that talks about neighbor-love. And then I walk chronologically through ancient Christian history, all the way to the 21st century, and ask, what does neighbor-love mean? How can we practice it? How does it respond to the greatest crises facing us today? So that course is available on our website.
John:
And if we wanted to support the neighbor love movement, how would someone do that?
Andrew:
We would be extremely grateful for your support. The first thing that we would ask is consider signing our covenant. Again, it's a 46-word covenant. It has seven practices. And when you sign that we'd urge you, print it out. You can download it and print it off of our website. Put it on your fridge, put it on your mirror, put it in your car. I have it next to my bed so that when I wake up, when I go to sleep, I remember this is the commitment that I've made. And we just encourage your listeners, become neighbor-love ambassadors, wherever you're hearing this conversation.
The second thing that I'd say is consider going deeper with some of the resources on our website. We have a 30-day mindfulness exercise that they can explore. We have this course in English. We also have a course in Amharic, by my brilliant partner Dr. Tekalign Nega. Check out some of those resources.
The third thing that I would say is consider becoming a financial partner. The neighbor-love movement is sustained by the generosity of neighbors around the world, and we would love for your listeners to consider giving once or on a monthly basis to help us keep going and to sustain this work in Ethiopia.
But really it's about the way that we live. Neighbor-love is passionate will and practical work for others wellbeing. We can start it at home in our family conversations, in our text communications, in our social media posts, in the ways that we engage people in our church communities or other communities. But yes, sign the covenant, explore these resources to go deeper, consider becoming a financial partner to help us sustain our work.
John:
I like to ask every guest to help us, because we’re readers, right? Who are three people, three scholars that we should be reading if we're hoping to promote a more healthy social fabric?
Andrew:
Ooh, this is challenging. Three scholars we should be reading to promote a more healthy social fabric. There's so many, so it's hard to choose. Do they need to be living or dead, or does it not matter?
John:
This will be more timeless if we say it doesn't matter.
Andrew:
I would encourage your readers to read Martin Luther King Jr. I know that he is primarily thought of for his speeches, but King was also a brilliant writer and a powerful analyst of society and human nature. And I would particularly encourage the small book Strength to Love. I hadn't read that book until my PhD program, but my wife and I read it together and found it to be one of the most powerful books that we have ever read. So I would say Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love.
Another thinker that I consider to be very, very important is Charles Taylor. I think Charles Taylor helps us understand trends in contemporary society towards secularization, what he calls fragilization. This connects to the question you were asking about unity and diversity. What do you do when you have a street corner where there's a church, a synagogue, a mosque, and a humanist temple? How do we inhabit such a society? Charles Taylor has been an extremely important scholar and analyst for me.
Ooh, it's so it's so hard to pick the third. I feel like I'm going to betray like a hundred others when I pick the third. I'm going to say Martha Nussbaum. I love Martha Nussbaum. I think that she offers a really important vision of what human flourishing means. As your listeners probably know, she calls it the capabilities approach, and she talks about different capacities that human beings need to flourish both as individuals and in community. And I think that Martha Nussbaum's understanding of what it means to be human, beyond just having enough money or enough food to survive, is extremely holistic and important. So I would encourage people didn't take a look at her book The Capabilities Approach—sorry, it's called Creating Capabilities. But many of her books are extremely profound and rich. So Martin Luther King jr., Charles Taylor, and Martha Nussbaum.
John:
Well, thank you so much, Andrew, for being with me today. And thank you for doing the important work that you are doing. The world is better for it.
Andrew:
Thanks for hosting this conversation, John. Thanks for your interest and support. We're deeply grateful.
John:
Thank you.