{"id":10331,"date":"2016-03-28T21:01:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T01:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=10331"},"modified":"2016-03-28T21:01:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T01:01:43","slug":"needing-my-neighbor-great-piece-by-matthew-loftus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2016\/03\/needing-my-neighbor-great-piece-by-matthew-loftus.html","title":{"rendered":"“Needing My Neighbor”: Great piece by Matthew Loftus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to help people<\/span>.\u201d<\/strong> My medical school application essay opened with those words, and when I came to Baltimore at age twenty to start my medical training, I was dead-set on helping people in Africa. After two years of attending church in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, though, I fell in love with the community, so my wife and I decided to move into the neighborhood in 2009. I admired the work my church there was doing to deal with the poverty, racism, and institutional neglect Sandtown was known for. (It became even more well-known for these ills in April 2015 when Freddie Gray suffered his fatal injury here.) \u2026<\/p>\n

In my work in Sandtown, it felt good to be helping others as I had always wanted to do, loving my neighbor in word and deed. Yet I felt unable to help myself.<\/p>\n

I remember the day my hands started to shake as I walked the two blocks from my main office to our satellite location. This other office, I knew, had unfiltered, unprotected wireless internet, and simply thinking about the ease with which I could access pornography there made me feel nauseated. I reached in my pocket for my phone to call a friend and community leader, Elder, as he is known in Sandtown.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to help people.\u201d My medical school application essay opened with those words, and when I came to Baltimore at age twenty to start my medical training, I was dead-set on helping people in Africa. 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