I was first intimidated by Ron Sider as a freshman in college when I read Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Sider crafts his assessment of the economic world so uncompromisingly I felt trapped. I was rich, clearly, with a standard of living far above most of the world, and, though only a student, I was headed toward a life of great income. Would I use it to gratify myself, stockpiling goods in what would surely be a massive house? Or would I give it away and be satisfied with second-hand blazers and minimal square footage? I appreciated Sider’s heart, but how was I going to achieve such an ideal?
I wasn’t able to resolve the question to my satisfaction during school and ignored it by pursuing unlucrative jobs. If I qualified for government support, I could avoid conundrums about faith and finances.
But Sider had shifted the continuum I used to consider wealth. Before Sider, the generosity-pole was populated by those who tithed and donated to charity. After Sider, I understood that if you were not sharing your lawnmower with your neighbors, you weren’t that serious about generosity.
I say all this because I think I’ve spotted the Ron Sider dynamic in Rosaria Butterfield. Her book The Gospel Comes with a House Key is to hospitality what Sider’s book is to generosity—a bold demand that Christians obey Scripture, paired with an intimidating image of what that obedience should look like.
What Butterfield calls Christians to is certainly beautiful. Labeling her vision “radically ordinary hospitality,” Butterfield asserts that Christians loving their neighbors means Christians knowing their neighbors, including—especially including—the weird or sketchy ones. It means Christians are not worried “about what the unbelieving neighbors think, because the unbelieving neighbors are right here, sharing our table, and they are more than happy to tell us what they think.”
Her vision involves Christians reaching out lovingly to those vastly different than themselves, accepting those whose beliefs are different, even when they don’t approve of those beliefs. It involves being a safe person for others to share their burdens with, being a person who refuses to treat their “neighbor as a caricature of an alien worldview.” It involves directing time, money and energy away from other activities and goods and toward loving others through hospitality.
In many ways, this vision articulates an ideal my wife and I have striven for throughout our marriage. I have long felt that churches consume too much of their energy amassing volunteer armies so they can host events, leaving members too depleted to learn their neighbors’ names, let alone have them over for dinner. So we have habitually dodged the drafts, possibly appearing standoffish (no Awana? No committees?) but leaving time for Bible studies or dinner guests. Butterfield capably defends such an approach.
In this she also reveals a fully respectful approach to evangelism, one particularly appealing to those of us who chafe at issuing invitation cards to church, putting up yard signs to advertise our Easter service, and employing the Way of the Master to trap some unsuspecting woman in the logic of street evangelism. Instead, we can use the rich and organic alternative of hospitality, which is ultimately a giving of ourselves to others, to turn “strangers into neighbors,” and, for some, “neighbors into family”—family being the family of God.
But turning visions into reality is not easy, and watching the reality of the Butterfield house is where I suffer from Sider-flashbacks. Butterfield rises from bed when a four is the first numeral on the clock, yet the day “ends late, with Kent making beds on the couches and blowing up air mattresses for a traveling, stranded family.” She is ready for guests every night, freezing the food or keeping it for leftovers if “for some odd reason” no one comes. She has to vacuum daily.
Are her actions beautiful? Yes. Would I recommend that she pull back? No.
But do I think others should follow her example? There I hesitate. After describing two occasions where her family has accommodated women living in their home, Butterfield observes, “none of this was hard.” But when I read these words I found myself muttering, “For you,” because, for me, it would be hard. I have seen my wife’s tired eyes when she sleeps less than seven hours. I have heard how different the conversations at our dinner table are when only our family sits at it. I have worked through days of difficulty after a guest stayed late and bedtimes were transgressed.
In other words, I’m keenly aware that it is hard to be hospitable: to cook for others and to clean for others and to consider their interests above our own. It is hard to engage in conversation with people who are not used to eating with others, who might offer clipped, closed answers to open-ended questions. It is definitely hard to read the Bible with those who find reading and cherishing that old book ridiculous.
But it’s still worth doing. It’s just crucial to recognize my own limitations, which is something the Butterfields’ example doesn’t illustrate.
And that means readers like me have to sketch our own models without being intimidated by the Butterfields’ models. It’s worth inviting a widower over for dinner, even if we don’t fill three tables with guests. It’s worth dedicating a day each week to inviting someone over, even if we do not plan on nightly guests.
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I never did become Ron Sider—I have health insurance, own two vehicles, and use the air conditioner. But after encountering his ideas I do look at my finances differently. I recognize my tremendous wealth, even though my family has always qualified for WIC vouchers. I spend more to support Compassion than I do on books. I have somehow resisted buying a road bike. This strikes me as a positive scenario for a continuum-pusher like Sider—while his ideas did not create a carbon copy of himself, they did move my heart in his direction. My center lies closer to him than it did before.
My hope is that the Butterfield effect could be similar. While I’m convinced the example she shares in her book is too extreme to expect carbon copies, it does push the bounds of the hospitality continuum. She shows us more is possible, and the accompanying vision is beautiful enough—and rooted enough in the gospel—that it may shift our center in her direction.
And that would be exciting, because if more Christians were to organize their lives around loving their neighbors instead of pleasing themselves, the church’s focus on programs and awkward evangelism could become not just silly, but unnecessary.
