Who Is My Neighbor?: Being a Good Samaritan in a Connected World

by Steve Moore

  We'll revisit Amy's story later in this chapter, but first I want to make the connection between Google and the Good Samaritan, between hyperlinks and “heartlinks.”

  PAGERANK AND PASSION

  Google is one of the most powerful and visible icons of globalization. Riding the wave of increased bandwidth and mobile connectivity, search engines such as Google have done more to democratize information than anything since Gutenberg invented the printing press. If a schoolgirl in Mumbai and a scholar in Oxford both want to know the gross domestic product (GDP) of Mozambique, the only difference between them is the connection speed of the Internet café in India compared to the bandwidth at the university in England. In a matter of seconds, if the connection speed is slow, nanoseconds if it's fast, they both have access to more information than anyone could possibly have imagined even a few decades ago.

  To prove my point, I just typed “GDP of Mozambique” into the Google search bar on my computer, and in a fraction of a second I discovered as of June 2010, according to the U.S. Department of State, it is $17.64 billion. I chose this search topic at random to illustrate the power of PageRank, the trademarked and patented link analysis algorithm named after Larry Page, the cofounder of Google. According to Wikipedia, PageRank “assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents … with the purpose of ‘measuring’ its relative importance within the set.”3 Here's how Google explains it on its corporate website:

  The software behind our search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. We use more than two hundred signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, we're able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.4

  I can't really explain all that to you in plain English. But what I do understand is PageRank enables Google to translate a few key words such as “GDP of Mozambique” into a list of hyperlinks with “the most relevant and reliable results first.” It shakes down the thousands of different sources of information and pulls together an algorithmically calculated list of data points with the most important ones at the top of the page. Regardless of whether you can spell Mozambique (Google can) or find it on a map, you can confirm the GDP in a few nanoseconds.

  Factoids aside, what does Google have to do with the Good Samaritan?

  What if there was a functional equivalent of PageRank for sorting out the answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” What if the same tools that supercharge globalization could actually point the way forward for us as we try to make sense of our response to the needs of others? What if we could borrow a page from Larry Page and generate a PageRank of our own that helps focus our primary service of others around God-ordained passions?

  What if this is how you find your neighbor?

  I believe God uses life-shaping experiences, as subtle and unexpected as Amy's encounter with a little girl outside a tea shop in Belfast, to create “heartlinks” that, like hyperlinks in Google's PageRank, become part of a spiritual algorithm, organizing and prioritizing the passions that connect us with opportunities for meaningful service. Identifying these passions and creating your own heartlink-driven PageRank will enable you to sort through the many opportunities a globalized world presents to find the few God-ordained places for you to leverage your giftedness to make a lasting impact. This is how the ocean of information can become rivers of passion, how you can move from being tossed back and forth by waves to flowing with the current toward a meaningful future.

  BACK TO BELFAST

  Several weeks after the heartlink at the tea shop, while walking home from the Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church, Amy saw an elderly woman struggling to carry a heavy bundle. She impulsively urged her two brothers, Norman and Ernest, to join her in helping the woman. One of her brothers took the woman's bundle, while the other supported an arm on the opposite side of the woman from Amy. As they walked, the streets became increasingly busy with pedestrians headed home from other churches. Amy couldn't help but notice the people were staring at them. She became increasingly self-conscious. Surely these people couldn't assume she knew this woman? In a moment, compassionate action morphed into prideful self-absorption, childish embarrassment, and fickle self-consciousness.

  In Amy's mind this good deed had become “a horrid moment.” As they passed an ornate Victorian fountain in the street, “This mighty phrase flashed as it were through the gray drizzle: ‘Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble—every man's work will be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it will be tested by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide….’”5

  The words rang out like a thunderclap. Amy turned to see who had spoken them. She saw nothing but the muddy streets and the fountain. Norman and Ernest heard nothing. But Amy knew this was the voice of God. Later that afternoon, Amy Carmichael shut herself in her room. She realized God was asking for her “gold” and was mortified with embarrassment that she had offered Him only “stubble.” She prayed, “Oh God, let me serve you with gold.”6

  With heart humbled and motives purified, Amy was drawn back to the heartlink established on the sidewalk outside the tea shop. It was time to translate the compassion she felt for the little girl into action. Amy began by inviting the children of her neighborhood to gather at her house on Sunday afternoons to play games, sing songs, and listen to Bible stories. As much as Amy enjoyed sharing with the neighborhood children, she realized there were others who had much less of a chance to hear the good news. She volunteered at the Belfast City Mission and visited the slums with the Reverend Henry Montgomery. Soon Amy was working with the poorest of her community, holding groups for both boys and girls.

  Eventually some older girls were drawn to her meetings. They worked in the mills and could not afford the proper hats of the day. They covered their heads with shawls and were commonly referred to as “shawlies.” The mill girls or shawlies were social outcasts. In some cases they were sexually molested. Many of them had become single mothers. Amy invited them to the Rosemary Street church, where she taught them etiquette, hygiene, and, of course, the Bible. The group grew in size to the point they could no longer fit in the Rosemary Street church. Amy needed a place of her own. But at age seventeen, how could she ever afford it?

  Over lunch one day, Amy shared her desire for a building with Kate Mitchell, a wealthy matron in the community. In a matter of days Amy received five hundred pounds from Kate Mitchell, along with a note saying, “Build your hall.” A mill owner donated the land, and on January 2, 1889, the “Welcome Hall,” as Amy called it, was dedicated. She was offering God her gold, and He was refining her passions, ordering the PageRank of her heartlinks and preparing Amy for future appointments with destiny that would leverage her giftedness in the service of others.

  I believe you have heartlinks like this too. And there are more waiting for you in the future. I want to help you understand why these life-shaping experiences are so important and how they develop into passions that fuel a life of meaningful service. Keep in mind that Amy Carmichael started on this journey as a teenager only a matter of weeks after surrendering her heart to Jesus. This is not reserved for vocational ministry leaders or an elite class of superspiritual Christ followers.

  TWO STREAMS OF PASSION

  There are two streams of passion potential in all of us. Both streams flow from self-directed sources of motivation. If you are truly passionate about something, you won't need others to drive you to pursue it. The first stream is your interest-based passions, things you do for fun that bring you pleasure. The second stream is your issue-based passions, activities you find fulfil
ling that give you a sense of purpose. Passion, both interestand issue-based, is rarely ever produced in a vacuum. Don't expect a randomly occurring spontaneous combustion of passion that instantly PageRanks and prioritizes the opportunities available to realize your potential and make a difference in the lives of others.

  My observation and experience suggest interest-based passions form when ability (or aptitude) and opportunity converge. Some people are passionate about chess, others baseball, still others handicrafts, and so on. We tend to like what we are good at and be good at what we like. Ability, or at least potential, and opportunity must be present for interest-based passions to develop, though some personalities are more inclined than others to create opportunities where they might otherwise not exist. In using the word fun to describe interest-based passions, I don't mean frivolous. Many interest-based passions are meaningful and rewarding, with a measure of stand-alone value, but not on the same scale with the causes on which one's purpose or legacy is built.

  Issue-based passions develop at the intersection of experience and empathy, what I've labeled heartlinks. If you talk to someone who is passionate about homelessness or sex trafficking or AIDS orphans, you will discover, somewhere in his or her journey, one or more meaningful experiences that unearthed a heightened level of empathy, the headwaters for a stream of issue-based passion. These heartlinks of passion are used by God to provide information that arouses compassion and translates into some kind of action. For Amy Carmichael it started rather unexpectedly as a teenager outside a tea shop in Belfast. For C. T. Studd it began inside a meeting hall in Liverpool at age fifty.7 If you can articulate your own issue-based passion, you probably recall where your journey began. If you can't, the heartlink that opens the headwaters of informed, compassionate action could be just around the corner.

  THE PASSION PYRAMID

  A hallmark of passion, whether interest- or issue-based, is an inner source of motivation and self-directed initiative. Passionate people benefit like everyone else from cheerleaders who believe in them and partners who hold them accountable. But if you are truly passionate you will not need to be cajoled or corralled into action. Passion is evidenced by self-directed initiative to learn more about, engage in, and influence others toward interests and issues even when sacrifice is required. I describe this progression of self-directed learning, engaging, influencing, and sacrificing as the passion pyramid.

  At the base of the passion pyramid is self-directed motivation to learn more about an interest or issue. Depending on how meaningful the experience that triggered the heartlink, this quest for information can be almost insatiable, prodding us to explore a variety of resources ranging from Internet searches to articles, books, YouTube videos, as well as formal and informal training opportunities. The second level in the passion pyramid involves some kind of participatory engagement. We continue our learning by some form of doing. We engage in activities we believe will meet a need, right a wrong, solve a problem, or promote a cause. The participation ranges from practicing a newly developing interest to engaging with an important issue by giving, volunteering, or taking other meaningful action.

  The third level in the passion pyramid is influencing others toward the interest or issue. As we learn more about and begin to engage in our passions, we can't help but enlist others to join us. Passion is contagious. In fact, one of the common heartlinks for passion is creative interaction with another person whose life is overflowing with energy and commitment to an interest or issue.

  At the top of the passion pyramid is a willingness to learn, participate, and influence even when it requires us to sacrifice time, energy, money, or personal convenience. Historically passion has always been associated with suffering in one way or another. This connotation for the word passion was framed in part by the translators of the King James Bible. The single place these translators chose to use the English word passion is Acts 1:3: “To whom also he [Jesus] shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” From this verse, we have come to associate the passion of Christ with the final hours of suffering He endured from the Last Supper through the Crucifixion. Of the forty times this Greek word, pascho, is used in the New Testament, all but three of them are translated “suffer” in the King James.8

  Genuine passion produces a self-directed commitment to learn more about, participate in, and influence others toward interests or issues even when it requires, as in the case of Christ, sacrifice or suffering.

  EVERYDAY PASSIONS

  Once you understand the passion pyramid you will start to recognize the inklings of interest and issue-based passions in yourself and others. My son Josiah has become an interesting case study for me on this topic. As I was preparing to write this chapter, I had a conversation with Josiah on the way home from school. He had been given a special part in the closing act of a drama presentation because of his interest-based passion for yo-yos, and it sparked a conversation about the passion pyramid using his journey as a case study.

  Several years ago he became fascinated with yo-yos. Without any outside prodding, Josiah began an obsessive, self-directed journey to learn more about them. He watched YouTube videos and read online forums to help improve his skills. He literally begged my wife and me for odd jobs he could do to earn enough money to buy fancier yo-yos, some of which cost over $100. Eventually he had such an impressive collection of yo-yos that he asked for a special carrying case for Christmas. He practiced for hours, refining high-level tricks. The more Josiah demonstrated his mad yo-yo skills for kids in the neighborhood, the more his friends were influenced to purchase yo-yos of their own. Eventually he entered himself in a state competition, where he came in third place for his age group. On the heels of this positive experience, Josiah posted videos of himself on YouTube and contacted a company to explore its interest in sponsoring him for future competitions. When the company expressed its desire for a sponsorship, Josiah was faced with a much greater level of commitment. He ultimately decided to remain an amateur yo-yo trickster and began to slowly reduce the amount of time and energy invested. This is interest-based passion at work.

  With the passion pyramid as a frame of reference, Josiah began discussing a possible issue-based passion he is exploring in the field of medicine. He explained that if he doesn't get a job in the first few weeks of summer, which is probable given the fact he is only fifteen and the job market is tight, he plans to volunteer at a local hospital. I asked why he wanted to volunteer, and he said the medical schools he has investigated online give priority to applicants who have volunteer experience at a hospital. When I suggested he consider a hospital closer to our home for convenience, he told me that wasn't possible; he had already checked the application requirements, and the closer hospitals have a minimum age of sixteen. All of this learning and initial steps toward participating were self-directed. This is what passion looks like in everyday life.

  We went on to process the fact that unlike personality or strengths, passion is not hard-wired by your genetics and often changes over time. I told him it doesn't really matter if he ends up in the medical field and there is no reason to put pressure on himself so early in the journey. But the best way to evaluate and refine a possible passion is to learn more about it and explore options for participatory engagement, which is exactly what he was doing by volunteering. If this really is an issue-based passion, over time he will hardly be able to keep from influencing others and will be increasingly open to keep learning as well as engaging even when sacrifice is required. And if medicine is in his future, there will be lots of learning and lots of sacrificing.

  FROM IRELAND TO INDIA

  Amy Carmichael's issue-based passion for the vulnerable, marginalized, and outcasts of her community led her from Ireland to India, where she would serve for more than fifty years. But the heartlink established outside the tea shop in Belfast would resurface as unexpectedly as it was establi
shed and PageRank the passion that became the cornerstone of her legacy.

  A little more than a decade after dedicating the “Welcome Hall” in Belfast, Amy would meet Preena, her first devadasi or “temple child,” or more literally, “female slave of the deity.” Throughout India young girls were sold by their parents to temple priests who initiated them as devadasis. Considered married to the temple deities, these young girls were taught ritual dances. In many cases they led a life of religiously sanctioned prostitution. Amy had already established a heartlink with “shawlies” in Ireland; another unexpected life-shaping experience was about to recalibrate the PageRank of Amy's passion, organizing and prioritizing her ministry.

  Preena had run away from the temple for a second time. Her hands were scarred from the burns she had been given as punishment for the earlier escape. Amy held the little girl tight. Preena called her “Amma”—mother. It was a foreshadowing of what was to come. Amy would become a “mother” to forsaken children. “Amma” had been a cry of destiny.

  Amy remembered the little girl she had seen outside the Belfast tea shop and the short verse she had written that night. Having been prepared by God through her work with the “shawlies,” the time had come to build a place for the Indian version of “little girls like you.” That place became known as the Dohnavur Fellowship and is still active in India today. Amy's issue-based passion fueled a long and difficult journey devoted to changing the laws in India so as to protect thousands of future Preenas from this kind of servitude.