By Angela Ryo

Recently, I heard a story of a 13-year-old boy named Steve that really struck me. He attended church every week with his parents, and one particular Sunday, he stayed behind to ask his pastor this pressing question: “Pastor, if I raise my finger, will God know which one I’m going to raise even before I raise it?” The pastor replied, “Yes, Steve. God knows everything.” Steve then pulled out a Life magazine that showed two starving children in Africa. He asked his pastor, “Well, does God know about this, and what’s gonna to happen to these kids?” The pastor gave a similar response: “Steve, I know you don’t understand, but yes, God knows about that too.”  After hearing that answer, Steve walked out of the church that day never to worship at a Christian church again.

There’s a saying that goes, “They don’t care what you know until they know you care.” In light of that saying, how would YOU have answered Steve differently? In generations to come, I believe this timeless truth will become more important than ever. Our post-pandemic church will depend on HOW we care rather than WHAT we know and the kinds of questions we ask and how we answer them.

This always takes me back to the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 where a lawyer comes to Jesus and asks the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” In essence, it reflects his transactional thinking: “If I do this, then I’ll get that.” It’s the same kind of question the rich young man asked Jesus but went away sad because he couldn’t do what Jesus was asking him to do; it’s the same kind of question the goats on the left asked in Matthew 25: “Jesus, if we KNEW those who were hungry and naked were really YOU, we would have fed them and clothed them! Why didn’t you tell us so that we could have done it?” Those are the wrong questions to ask!

Jesus answers by telling the lawyer the story about the Good Samaritan. By doing so, Jesus’ point is, it’s not about WHAT you know — it’s about HOW you love.  Inheriting eternal life is really about the fullness of life we have with God. And fullness of life does not hinge on how we answer transactional questions; it’s about how we live out relational questions: How do we grow? How do we love? How do we experience the fullness of God together? And relational questions deserve relational answers — not transactional ones.

So, who was person named “Steve” that I mentioned in the beginning? That was Steve Jobs, the Founder and CEO of Apple. What was it about the pastor’s answer that didn’t sit well with the 13-year-old Steve? Perhaps it was because the pastor couldn’t hear the relational question behind Steve’s question. Steve wasn’t really asking a question about the nature of suffering. Likely behind Steve’s question about the suffering children in Africa was more personal questions about why God would allow suffering in his own life, such as being bullied at school, financial struggles at home, and being given up by birth parents for adoption. Most likely, as Steve was trying to make sense of the pain in our world, he wanted his pastor to understand and help him make sense of his own pain. Steve wasn’t asking to see what the pastor knew, but rather, if the pastor cared — if God cared — about him and about the sufferings of others around him.

Steve’s story as seen through the lens of the Good Samaritan is a good reminder for me as a pastor to heed the timeless truth, “They don’t care what you know until they know you care.”

Angela Ryo currently serves as the Associate Pastor for Christian Formation at Kirk in the Hills in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She enjoys taking long walks, reading, listening to NPR, and drinking good coffee with friends and strangers alike.