Note: From Becoming Neighbors (Eerdmans, 2026). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
Can you imagine a world where we become neighbors to one another? Amid our struggles and divisions, can you envision a shared, communal table where people are joined together across their differences? Can you close your eyes and picture who might be sitting to your left and right? Whose presence makes your heart skip a beat? What dishes do you smell? What languages do you hear? What will you contribute?
Horizontal Living
This book is about the pursuit of the common good through a faith formed by and toward love of neighbor. It has in mind what and who we will be to each other in this cultural moment and in the moments to come. At the heart of this work is a simple but critical question: How will we live?
Cultivating this shared vision of the common good is a deeply local task. The key to shared flourishing for our neighborhoods is not located beyond the stars – if only we could build ideological spaceships to capture it. Instead, communities thrive when we turn our gaze horizontally toward our neighbors and the world around us. Contained in every person is an endless galaxy of beliefs and experiences, of joys and sorrows, of fears and comforts. Any meaningful pursuit of a common good will require us to know our neighbors.
What will draw Christians toward common action toward the common good, though, is not only shared belief; it is also shared desire. We must become a people whose faith and desire are nurtured, formed and cultivated by love for our neighbors. When we join with others in this common life, we are drawn into the vast expanse of their infinity just as they are drawn into ours. This neighbor-loving work not only changes what we believe about our neighbors; it also transforms how we relate to them. They are no longer enemies to fight; they are people to love. They are no longer social media handles or digital avatars; they are complex humans who are motivated by their deep values and their felt vulnerabilities. If we seek the shared flourishing of our community, we must desire right relationship with our neighbors.
Take a Seat at the Table
Seeking the common good through this local practice of neighbor love is messy and complicated work. It would be far easier to remain aloof and simply read about our “neighbors” in books and surveys or make assumptions about them based on their yard signs. However, cultivating a truly common good requires humble proximity where our beliefs and assumptions about one another are challenged by the lived experiences of our neighbors. Our shared flourishing is impossible unless we enter into a common life where we are formed by and toward one another. Throughout this book, I use a simple illustration to describe this space: the table.
The table where the common good is cultivated recognizes and honors the goodness of all who are seated around it. At the table, people of different faiths, cultures, traditions and beliefs are valued as partners in the work of loving and joining. Shared flourishing is not a zero-sum game, and we are not competitors. As neighbors, we come bearing our community’s best “dishes,” eager to share our wisdom, liturgies and practices with others. It is marked by a desire for conversation, not conversion, for shared action, not stubborn arguments.
The table also reminds us that goodness is not hidden behind a locked church door. Our God is too generous to reserve goodness for any one people or keep it stored in one place. Our pursuit of the common good must recognize and honor the goodness present in those outside our tradition. We must acknowledge that this work of cultivating a common good has long been happening outside the church. At the table, we cannot eat only what we brought. Our plates must be filled with our neighbors’ dishes as well.
It is true that Christians have often failed to do this well. Our relationship to the table has historically been marked by either absence or domination. We either refuse to join in this neighborly work or, if we do show up, we walk past our seats, grab the microphone and assume we are running the meeting. That said, the task of this book is not to diagnose or examine all the ways that we have fallen short of joining in this shared work of communal flourishing. Instead, I offer a humble plea: take a seat. Join God’s good and redemptive work already present here.
I am convinced that the more we attend to the needs of our community, the more attuned we will be to God’s good purposes and actions in the world. The more we can open ourselves to the possibility of love – even love across our deep disagreements – the more we will find ourselves looking and living like Christ in our world. This isn’t a transactional love; it is a selfless love. This is a pursuit of a common good formed in and by a neighborly faith that sees the world as braided together in a dance of mutual flourishing and radical love. This is a commitment to nurturing our community, which includes both the places we inhabit and the people we dwell in them with.
The common good is not found; it is built in community. Seeking the common good begins by walking across the street, knocking on our neighbor’s door and entering into relationship with them. This means we must open ourselves to the possibility of love – both bestowing love upon others and receiving love for ourselves. We must look around us and witness the rituals, stories, beliefs and traditions our communities instill deep meaning into. We must recognize that any meaningful vision of the common good will bind together our flourishing with the flourishing of our neighbors. As the poet Christian Wiman concludes, “The revelation we want – or at any rate the revelation we need – is not ultimate, but intimate.” [Christian Wiman, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, p. 227] A meaningful vision of the common good grows in the intimate relationship of neighbors living and loving together.
What If the World Doesn’t End?
Writing at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, singer-songwriter Jensen McRae released a song titled “Immune.” Amid the deep divides across America stressed by the ever-present reality of sickness and death, she asks a simple question: “What will we be to each other if the world doesn’t end?” [Jensen McRae, “Immune,” written by Rahki and Jensen McRae, 2021]
We again live – or perhaps never cease to live – in a moment that feels as if humanity’s future hangs in the balance. The trouble with these moments is that, if the world is going to end, we can find our way to justify almost anything. When we believe our entire future depends on the outcome of a presidential election, vaccine mandate, position of leadership or government policy, we will go to great lengths to ensure that we are on the “winning” side.
But what will we be to each other if the world doesn’t end? What will we say to each other when, after doing all we can to secure our power and desires, the world continues to spin and we must live with one another? What will we be to each other when, after speaking the most hateful and vile rhetoric about those who are different from us, we must share a community?What will we do when we encounter the reality of our neighbors at the community center or grocery store? How will we live with those we call our enemies as we share a hospital, playground, softball league or congregation?
Excerpted from Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local by Amar D. Peterman ©2026 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). Reprinted with permission from the publisher.
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