Feb. 13, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:
We have neighbors all over the world
By Mike Haynes
I don’t watch the Olympics much anymore like I did the first few decades of my life. On one of the first days of the Beijing Winter Games, though, I turned on the TV and a red, white and blue flag caught my eye.
No, not Old Glory, although ours still is my favorite. It was the Norwegian red banner with a blue cross and white trim, next to the names of a mixed doubles curling team.
I also am not one of those Americans who, during previous Winter Olympics, became fascinated with curling, that sport where people on skates start a heavy round “rock” sliding down an ice runway, then use a little broom to sweep in front of it to help it go where they want it to. The closest thing I can compare it to is table shuffleboard.
For me, it’s interesting for about five minutes, but I watched the man-woman team from Norway for maybe 30 minutes not so much to see how they did against Canada but because in 2019, Kathy and I were blessed to visit their country. Yes, we were just tourists, but even our short exposure to a beautiful, captivating part of the northern world gave us a perspective that we wouldn’t have if we had stayed home.
We loved interacting, if only briefly, with friendly people in the larger cities of Bergen and Oslo, with tour guides helping us try to see the Northern Lights in sub-zero temperatures and with native Sami people who raise reindeer.
So when I saw “Norge” on the back of the curling team’s shirts, I knew that it’s Norwegian for “Norway” and that, as a blond store clerk had told me when I asked, it’s pronounced, “NOR-ga.”
Kathy and I have been to a few other countries, too, and as a result we have an appreciation not only for the meaning of visible things such as Israel’s Western Wall but to some extent for the attitudes and opinions of people in other cultures.
When I visited East Berlin with a group of college students a few years ago, our tour included a stop at one of the World War II memorials to the thousands of Soviet soldiers who died in the battle to take Berlin from the Nazis. Now I’m as proud of the crucial U.S. role in winning the war as any American can be, but the young man who spoke at that memorial in Germany reminded us that the Soviet Union also played a huge part in stopping Hitler. Russians and other residents of the former USSR take great pride in their country’s sacrifice.
In the current world political climate, it may be hard for Americans to think positively about Russians or Iranians or maybe even Chinese people. But when you meet people from other countries one on one, it’s easy to realize that usually, it isn’t the people who cause trouble, but governments.
The Olympics are supposed to bring athletes and their supporters from all sides of the globe together in friendship, and Christians should understand that global camaraderie better than anyone. After all, Jesus lived in the Middle East, nowhere near the western world. He spoke Aramaic, not English. Christianity spread to Rome and eventually to the rest of Europe and to North America, and now some of its greatest growth is in Asia, Africa and South America.
Christ said we should love our neighbors as ourselves, and he didn’t mean just our next-door neighbors. In the well-known story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), he tells us the definition of “neighbor” was the Samaritan, a traditional enemy of the Jews, who mercifully helped a beaten-up Jew on the side of the road.
The Bible makes it clear that God wants us to love everyone with no exceptions. We don’t always have to agree with them, but it helps us to love people if we make an effort to see the world from their perspective. We can do that whether we travel “across the pond” or just talk to the guy across the street.
And being a fan of curling isn’t a requirement.
