You Shall Love Your Crooked Neighbor With Your Crooked Heart

One of my major personal afflictions is my self-righteousness. I want to believe, and generally do believe, that I am better than most other people out there. Humans are inveterate experts at self-righteousness and self-justification. Our motives are so clear to ourselves (or so we think) that if only people could see it from our perspective our actions would all make sense. Part of becoming an adult is realizing that you're actually a bastard. That your motives are neither pure nor clear. That your self is neither righteous nor just. Obviously, I still struggle living out this knowledge, but it's there now. Mercifully, God has revealed to me just how deep the depravity goes in my own soul. 

I was thinking about these things as I read W.H. Auden's poem "As I Walked Out One Evening" a few weeks ago and have incessantly returned to it in the meantime. I don't want to explicate the entire thing, but you should most certainly for the sake both of your humanity and your appreciation of beauty go and read this poem now. Here is a link for your convenience. 

Pertaining to self-righteousness and its nonexistence, I want to zero in on a few lines from the end of Auden's poem (again, I can't recommend highly enough to read it in its entirety). The conceit of the poem is a lover singing to his beloved about the depth of his love in ridiculous romantic diction: "I'll love you dear, I'll love you,/ Till China and Africa meet"; "I'll love you till the ocean/ Is folded and hung up to dry"; etc. 

The clocks in the city answer the lover's outlandish claims in rather more pessimistic language. They warn: "O let not Time deceive you/ You cannot conquer time." Time is a real douchebag in this poem. "Time watches from the shadow/ And coughs when you would kiss." Gah! What an image. The clocks assert that you are not going to be carpe-dieming your way through life. Rather, "in headaches and in worry/ Vaguely life leaks away." Vaguely, purposelessly, imprecisely--there goes life.

The clocks chill out after a bit, though, and add some dark encouragement to their admonition. Here it's worth quoting at a bit greater length:

‘O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.'

That last stanza. It is hard not to cry reading that. This is not blithe moralizing. There are tears scalding your eyes. You are looking in desperation out of the window. Out at a world that often seems careless. At a world full of crooked people. But, you shall love your crooked neighbor, in the end. With your crooked heart. 

Self-righteousness gleefully recognizes the crookedness of your neighbor. Despair sees only your own. But this, this is something different altogether. This acknowledges your fundamental brokenness and that of your neighbor. And its command is love. When we see the crookedness in our neighbor we are not moved to self-righteous pity, but love that recognizes a fellow pilgrim. 

And that is beautiful, despite the tears. We will love each other in our crookedness until the day we are made straight.