Season Two opens with the question underneath everything else we'll talk about this fall.
The Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic. Most conversations stop right there, at the diagnosis. This one starts a step earlier — with the question that got us here.
Our guest is Brian Bales. He's a pastor now, coming up on thirty years, but he didn't start there. He studied political science, took the LSAT, got into law school, and spent five years as an attorney negotiator for an insurance company before his life changed course. He says if God had told him early on that the plan was ministry, he'd have run like Jonah. He also showed up to the studio in the same shirt as Dave. Neither of them planned it. Both of them kept it on.
Brian's take on the loneliness epidemic is that it isn't new. It's been underneath our culture for a long time. We just kept it managed — busy calendars, distractions, the next thing. Then the pandemic took all the painkillers away, and what was always there was suddenly right in front of our faces.
The conversation lands on a distinction worth sitting with. When someone asks "who is my neighbor?" — there are two kinds of askers. The sincere one, who genuinely wants to know what's required. And the loophole person, who's looking for a technicality. The one who asked Jesus the question already knew the answer. He wanted permission to do less.
Most of us know which one we are on a given day.
From there the conversation goes to the places the question actually lives. Marching band parents, and the groups inside the groups. The story behind the story — why nobody arrives at what they're doing in a vacuum. Why a full social calendar is not the same thing as community. Why a church works better as a hospital than a country club. And Brian's line that may be the one to carry into the week: the opposite of listening isn't speaking. The opposite of listening is assuming.
Which sets up the better question — better than "who is my neighbor?" Brian puts it this way: What am I assuming to be true that I can't prove?
That I'll be rejected. That they're what the label says. That I don't have time. Most Americans eat 21 meals a week. What would it look like to share one of them?
After the anchor episode with Shannon Kirkpatrick, this episode is the front door to the rest of the season. Over the next twelve weeks we'll talk with people doing this work — through tribalism, through hard seasons, through cocktails and stories and a live finale in December. It starts here, with the question and what it costs us.
Listen wherever you get podcasts, or watch on YouTube.
Got a show idea or want to reach out? Email TheDave@shutupandloveyourneighbor.com. Follow along on Instagram @neighborlypour. And if you want to wear the message, head to shutupandloveyourneighbor.com. Talk less and love more.