Post 8: A Neighbor in Need
Image: AI generated image of two guys talking in the hallway of an apartment building.
Post Summary: In this post, I discuss meeting a next-door neighbor who lived in my apartment building and how I began our friendship showing him Christian love and witnessing to him about Jesus.
In late April 2024, I met a neighbor from my building who had just returned from an extended stay in the hospital due to an injury, resulting surgery, and a few weeks of recovery in the hospital. During one of our first conversations, he mentioned that he needed help to get his apartment cleaned up because he had been in the hospital and he was too weak at this point to do much bending that was necessary to clean the place up. In his extended absence, his place was falling into serious neglect but really looked like it had not been cleaned in years!
I offered to help him get things cleaned up, and over the next couple of weeks, I would help with various cleaning tasks around the apartment and pick up groceries for him. Regularly, he developed a pattern of asking for financial assistance for various things, and sometimes even became a little pushy about when or if I would give him any money.
This seemed like a perfect opportunity to display the love of Christ to a neighbor in need. Sometimes in these early conversations, I would ask him questions about whether had any religious beliefs and try to witness to him about Christ. In those conversations, he would either claim to know more about the Most High than I could know because he was older (and supposedly more wise) and had been reading the bible since before I was born. He would often make claims that the Bible says something that seemed a bit unusual. Whenever I would press him to produce specific verses that could speak to the points he was trying to make, he could not produce any verses despite seeming very sure of himself about the biblical claims he was making. Sometimes, days after a discussion, he would randomly text me with a bible verse and say “see this is that thing I was telling you about”, trying to make it seem like he had certain knowledge about God, but even then he was just cherry-picking verses to make the bible agree with him.
After the first month or so of knowing him and helping him out with various things, he opened up to me about some negative things that happened in his past, and a few of his current health struggles outside of the immediately obvious. He mentioned that he came from troubled background where his parents and sister, claiming to be Christians, would frequently be abusive towards him in various ways as he grew up. The actions of his family soured his view Christianity in general, and he grew up angry and bitter towards God.
He said that he used to be an electrician but suffered an electrocution during a job. He mentioned that this should have killed him, but instead it severely disabled the arm that received the initial shock and likely messed up other things in his body. This injury had prevented him from working for a long time and so he needed to go on disability and financial assistance to help with obtaining housing.
He also mentioned that he used to be a drug dealer to make extra money. He would sometimes brag about how “together” he used to be and how he was well respected among those he knew in the trade. He has also suffered mental issues for a good portion of his adult life. He also said he had periods of depression and that he made several attempts at ending his own life. I was also there for him as emotional support when he lost a close friend of his and being there to encourage him on a few occasions when he was expressing despair about his current life and health situations. In these instances, I would remind him about Jesus being a comforter (2 Corinthians 1:3-4) and our strength in times of trouble (Isaiah 41:10).
Sometimes he'd get irritated when I would bring up anything about Jesus and would say things like “don't bring your Jesus around today. also talk with him about having a relationship with God through salvation in Christ and would share various scriptures and videos about salvation. He would say the videos didn't really mean anything meaningful to him. He would sometimes say that he has a relationship with the Most High but then when I would offer to read the bible with him, sometimes he'd say he hates reading the bible and we don't need to read the bible to have a relationship with God. So, confusingly, he hates reading the bible, but at the same time, he's been reading the bible since before I was born???
Needless to say, he has been a very confusing person at times. He has turned out to be a person that is very full of himself and thinks his wisdom is the best wisdom. He often says contradictory things and acts like he is far from knowing the only True and Living God! He will remain in my prayers and with God's help, maybe one day he will be brought into the truth of Christ!
Stay tuned for the next post, where I'll be discussing my first thoughts and misunderstanding about baptism that lead me to go on a mad dash to find a church that would baptize me as soon as humanly possible.