I know many people in Christendom who go the extra mile. They organize things. They help people. They have fun. All good; all visible; all very much the extra mile. But they pay no attention to the first mile. They cheat their business partners. They ignore or abuse the people closest to them. The extra mile is the main agenda. Because it is visible. It is the mile that defines them to the world. If it is not visible, it just doesn’t matter.

The Christian concept of going the extra mile comes, of course, from the Gospels when Jesus taught us that if one asks you to walk a mile then you should walk two. This teaching refers to a Roman law at the time that if a Roman soldier came to you that you were required by law to carry his possessions for one mile. Jesus said that you should do that to satisfy the Roman law, but that you should go the extra mile as well. It is the same lesson as giving a full measure flowing over, and paying to Caesar what is Caesar’s and paying to God what is God’s.

But he didn’t say to ignore the first mile. Going the second mile for God requires completing the first mile successfully. We have distorted the teaching. We have separated the two miles and claimed the first one for ourselves. We have perverted Jesus’ teaching. As long as we do the second mile, we can use the first mile to serve our own selfish and sinful natures. So Christendom is filled with good and righteous actors who do evil in their private time. And us? We are Pharisees. We do what we do for show, and we think it’s alright because some collateral good comes out of it. It’s not okay though because our hearts are not right, and God weighs hearts.

What in our lives is in the first mile and what is in the second? Loving strangers is wonderful, but what about loving our loved ones? So many of us bend over backwards for our friends and even total strangers and utterly neglect the people who need us most. We volunteer and fill our lives with benevolent busy work, and at the same time make it very clear to our spouses and kids that we are too tired for them or just don’t want to be bothered. It is a great tragedy when those whose very lives are defined by and depend on our love live in isolation. It’s despairing, and it utterly ignores our obligation to “the first mile”. This shouldn’t be. Those people are much more than the ones we should feel obligated to, they are the ones we should most want to love.

We treat those who have nothing charitably, but how do we treat those who have something? Jesus wasn’t a social planner. He didn’t organize social programs to identify the materially needy and focus on them in preference to the materially comfortable. No, he met everyone where they were and loved them with the same firmness and forgiveness and comfort. And he did it all as quietly as possible. He even admonished his beneficiaries to tell no one what they had received. We all need love and comfort and forgiveness. We all need and deserve to be treated fairly and with good will, but this does not happen. We seek out the needy, and that is wonderful. We then help them as publicly as possible, and often short change those who “don’t need us”. That is not so wonderful.

We volunteer, but what about when we seize control to the point that others cannot volunteer? How about not volunteering to allow others to have a chance? The leaders in some churches are, sadly, the best examples of unchristian behavior. Some people become so committed to their causes that even other causes in the same congregation become the “enemy”. Some feel such ownership of their efforts that they won’t even allow input, much less leadership, in their own projects. Christians sadly provide some of the best examples of the worst sins of human nature. Jesus was not a politician, and although he was all-knowing, he was manifestly humble and unassuming. He had an absolute right to holy and righteous indignation, but he was completely patient and forgiving. We have no right to feel all-knowing or holy and yet we feel entitled to be authoritarian, to lord over and judge and condemn our own brothers and sisters for the slightest fault. Jesus was fairly clear about the condemnation for this conceit.

We do charitable things for which we can gain a tax advantage, but what about doing things that are right but for which we gain no material advantage, whether it is a monetary gift or pro bono work? What about when there is nothing in it for us?

We think the first mile is ours. We also think it is invisible. It is neither. We think the defining characteristic of the second mile is that it is visible. That is totally our fabrication. Jesus said to give in secret; to never let the right hand know what the left hand is doing. Maybe the best way we can express fidelity to Jesus’ teaching is to let what we consider our first mile be public and our second mile be private. Although the distinction is artificial and entirely of our own making, what a revelation it would be for our business dealings to be publicly honest and for our charity to be newly private while no less effective.