Like many others, I was warned not to carelessly give money to people begging on the streets. The reason was always the same: “Be careful. Some of them are evil and dangerous. Some pretend to be needy just to destroy people.” It was advice given out of love and protection, and over the years, I came to understand why.
We live in a world where kindness is sometimes exploited, where trust can become an opportunity for manipulation, and where good intentions occasionally end in painful regret.
Yet those childhood warnings have often collided with another voice that has echoed through my life, which is the command to love my neighbour as myself. I have found myself wondering, Who exactly is my neighbour today?
Jesus answered that question in a way that still unsettles me. When asked who a neighbour was, He did not point to a family member, a friend, or someone from the same community. He told the story of a stranger who stopped, showed mercy, and acted with compassion. The neighbour was not identified by familiarity but by kindness. That challenges many of the invisible boundaries I have built around my compassion.
The difficulty, however, is that today’s world is more complicated than the road to Jericho. Stories of scams, staged emergencies, online fraud, and calculated deception have made many of us cautious. We hesitate before helping because we fear becoming victims ourselves. Sometimes that caution is necessary.
Wisdom should never be mistaken for a lack of compassion. But I also wonder whether constant suspicion has quietly trained us to ignore genuine suffering. In protecting ourselves from the few who deceive, have we unintentionally become unavailable to the many who truly need help?
Goodwill does not require me to abandon wisdom. It invites me to combine wisdom with humanity. There may be moments when giving cash is not the wisest response, but there are countless other ways to acknowledge another person’s worth.
I have also realised that my neighbour is not always the stranger on the street. Sometimes my neighbour is the colleague silently battling depression, the classmate who cannot afford learning materials, the widow next door, the single parent carrying impossible burdens or the security guard whose name I have never bothered to learn.
This reflection has reminded me that goodwill is not about solving every problem in the world. It is about refusing to let fear, prejudice, or convenience decide the boundaries of our compassion. I may not be able to help everyone, but I can choose not to become indifferent.
Perhaps that is what loving our neighbour truly means today. It is not the absence of discernment but the presence of a heart that refuses to stop seeing people as worthy of care. In a world growing increasingly suspicious, genuine goodwill may begin with something as simple as choosing to notice, choosing to care, and choosing to act where you can.
Ready to turn goodwill into action?
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