The Priorities of the Good Samaritan

February 8, 2025February 3, 2025Todd R 1 Comment

The parable of the Good Samaritan is well-known, even by those who aren’t Christian. Briefly, it goes like this: a man is robbed, beaten, and left for dead on the side of a road. First a priest, and then a Levite, passed him by, offering no help at all. But a Samaritan, a member of a group despised by many Jews, stopped and helped the man, even bringing him to further help and paying the necessary expenses.

There is a lesson in the story about priorities – what this Good Samaritan put first, and what he didn’t. But before covering his #1 priority, here are some things he did not prioritize, even though these aren’t necessarily bad things:

His first priority was not to fight for stricter laws against robbers. What the robbers did was probably already illegal, and definitely not morally right. We don’t know the fate of the robbers in the story, but they might have gotten away with this near murder. In modern times, if criminals are getting away with bad behavior, a movement sometimes grows to make something that is already illegal “more illegal.” If robbing is against the law, some might lobby to make the punishment harsher, or to focus laws on particular victims or perpetrators, but if they’re getting away with it now, how will these changes help? The Good Samaritan couldn’t do much about this immediately, so it wasn’t his first priority.

His first priority also was not to raise public awareness of violence along the highways. He didn’t create posters and social media hashtags (I write as if those things existed then). Such a campaign can have benefits. It could help people be more careful when traveling, it might encourage the government to allocate more of its limited resources toward highway safety, but it will never completely solve the problem. The Good Samaritan couldn’t do much about this immediately, so it wasn’t his first priority either.

So, what was the Good Samaritan’s priority? He focused on what he could control, and any other concerns came later. He focused on the problem right in front of him – a man beat up and near death on the side of the road. Sometimes we can focus so much on advocating, that we lose sight of doing. (I worry about that for myself as someone who spends so much time blogging.) But the Good Samaritan “proved to be a neighbor”[1] by taking care of the neighbor right in front of him.

We can also be deluded into thinking that our government and other institutions should be able to solve all of our problems if only we fight hard enough for it. However, they never will be enough, because any and all institutions are made up of people who too often deny their own responsibility for the problems of the world. Especially on social media, we often get the illusion that we can offload our responsibility for the world to others, and that what’s happening somewhere else is more important than what’s right in front of us.

While advocacy can be a good and necessary thing, God wants us to prioritize doing, which is what everyone in heaven will do! In heaven, everyone will be like the Good Samaritan (and like Jesus), and therefore we won’t need better laws, awareness campaigns powered by advertising and hashtags, or stricter enforcement of laws. The bloody victim by the roadside won’t exist. And that is something to look forward to!

In the meantime:
“I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know. God may call any one of us to respond to some far away problem or support those who have been so called. But we are finite and he will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.” – C.S. Lewis

[1] Luke 10:36

The Cost of Being a Good Samaritan

February 1, 2025January 29, 2025Todd R 2 Comments

Years ago, I heard a sermon illustration about a parent looking out the window and seeing their kids playing with a skunk. Naturally, they yelled out to the kids “get away from there and come inside!” The kids quickly came inside but brought the skunk with them! The point of the story is that when we want to help others, sometimes their problems become our problems. There is a cost to truly loving others.

The same principle comes out of the parable of the Good Samaritan. In the well-known parable a man is robbed, beaten, and left for dead on the side of a road. First a priest, and then a Levite, passed him by. But a Samaritan, a member of a group despised by many Jews, stopped and helped the man. This help had a significant cost, as described in Luke 10:34-35:

“He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’”

Here’s a list of what the Good Samaritan provided for the man in these two verses:

Likely some kind of cloth to bind the wounds. He likely tried to use the cleanest cloth he had with him and ripped or cut it as needed.
Oil and wine, which he “poured” on the man’s wounds. He is more concerned about treating the man than about pouring out too much.
A ride on his own animal. The Samaritan walked alongside, giving the man the more comfortable trip to the inn.
Money. Denarii is the plural of denarius, which was about a day’s wages for a laborer. The Samaritan spent at least two days wages (“two denarii”) and promised to pay more if needed.
Ongoing care and concern. The Samaritan promised to pay “when I come back.” He was going to make a return trip to the inn to check up on the man.

Contrast this to the priest and Levite, who both “passed by on the other side” to avoid being contaminated by the man, who appeared dead. The Samaritan was more concerned about providing help than about whether he would become ceremonially unclean.

Loving people often has costs, including significant ones and ones we don’t anticipate, like the skunk that ended up in the house in the opening example. While we can’t help everyone in need that we come across, and we’re unlikely to come across someone beat up and left for dead, “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” – James 2:15-16

“No one can do everything, but everyone can do something” – Max Lucado

The Love of a Good Samaritan

January 25, 2025January 23, 2025Todd R 3 Comments

The parable of the Good Samaritan is well-known, even by those who aren’t Christian. Briefly, it goes like this: a man is robbed, beaten, and left for dead on the side of a road. First a priest, and then a Levite, passed him by. But a Samaritan, a member of a group despised by many Jews, stopped and helped the man, getting him to help and paying the necessary expenses.

Jesus told the parable in response to a man who said to inherit eternal life, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”[1] But then “desiring to justify himself,” he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” He was looking for loopholes, for people he did not need to love.

Now, there are multiple words in New Testament Greek that translate as “love” in our English Bibles, and the love being discussed in this parable is agape love. This love is a self-sacrificial love that puts the interests of others above the interests of self, even if those others don’t love you. Agape motivates acts of benevolence or charity and is epitomized by the cross.

So, why did the priest and the Levite not love the man left on the side of the road? These men were very religious and should have been interested in doing the right thing according to God.

It could have been that if the man actually looked dead, or would be soon, they didn’t want to risk becoming ceremonially “unclean.” Numbers 19:11-13 says:

“Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days. He shall cleanse himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day, and so be clean. But if he does not cleanse himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not become clean. Whoever touches a dead person, the body of anyone who has died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles the tabernacle of the LORD, and that person shall be cut off from Israel; because the water for impurity was not thrown on him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is still on him.”

The last thing they may have wanted to do was defile the Temple, or to be kept away from worship for seven whole days. They had to keep up appearances after all.

It might have been that they just didn’t consider the man to be their neighbor, or a member of their “tribe”. Tribalism was alive and well in ancient Israel, and neither Samaritans nor near-dead men in need of help belonged.

In either case, they passed by the person because they had rules that told them it was ok to desert him. These rules may have been faulty applications of Scripture, or just cultural rules, but the rules resulted in situations where it was preferred to not love someone, even in very desperate need.

A lesson Jesus wanted us to take from the parable is that the person who loves whoever needs love, even if they are a Samaritan or from a different “tribe” than ours, is the one who will inherit eternal life. We don’t get to decide who is our neighbor, and therefore who to love.

American culture is increasingly condemning any rules restricting who we should have erotic love (Greek eros) for, but it is also increasingly welcoming of rules limiting who we should have sacrificial love (agape) for. American culture is increasingly permissive of hate toward people in other political parties or those who don’t think the same way about issues. We are getting better at identifying our enemies, while getting worse at loving them.

However, from the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus makes clear that any rules that tell us when it is ok to ignore agape love are bad rules. In true righteousness, Jesus would rather die on the cross than leave a man stranded on the side of the road to follow some rule. Jesus was the only one who could live a perfect life of live, but He also said, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”[2] Therefore, show agape love to your neighbor, no matter who they are. Be the good neighbor. And when (not if) you can’t, trust in God’s mercy and his love for you, which never fails.

[1] Luke 10:27
[2] Luke 14:27

A Mystery in the Good Samaritan Parable

January 17, 2025Todd R 2 Comments

The parable of the Good Samaritan is well-known, even by those who aren’t Christian. Briefly, it goes like this: a man is robbed, beaten, and left for dead on the side of a road. First a priest, and then a Levite, passed him by. But a Samaritan, a member of a group despised by many Jews, stopped and helped the man, even bringing him to help and paying the necessary expenses.

There’s a great contrast made between these people, but another interesting question is what they have in common in the story: they are all identified by their cultural “tribe.” This brings up another interesting contrast: the man, left bloodied on the side of the road, was not identified as anything other than a “man,” or broadly, a human being. The only thing we know about this person is that “he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.”[1] What else was there to know?

By not defining this person, Jesus was not letting His audience limit their responsibility. According to the Reformation Study Bible: “First-century Jews had various ideas about who was included in the category of ‘neighbor,’ whether marking its boundaries by community or clan affinities or by religious party affiliation (a Pharisee’s neighbors would be other Pharisees). Yet at its widest extent, the circle of ‘neighbors’ was confined to Israel.” In short, the Jews were using tribalism to exclude people from the definition of neighbor, in a similar way people use concepts like intersectionality to include people over others today, but in the Good Samaritan parable, nobody is excluded.

To Jesus, the identity of the victim is not relevant – the neighborly thing to do isn’t to help because of who the person is (whether they belong to your own clan or tribe), but because they are a person – made in God’s image – who is hurt. In other words, if there’s a bloody man on the road in front of you, don’t say God didn’t require you to deal with it because the man is not your neighbor, by some narrow definition.

Jesus was making the broadest interpretation possible. When we consider the situation of each person on Earth – damaged by sin, robbed of their dignity, and left for spiritual death – isn’t everyone like this man by the side of the road?

While we can’t expect to help every hurting person we see, the message Jesus wanted us to hear by not identifying this victim is that we shouldn’t have any pre-defined rules about who is our neighbor when obeying the command: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[2] Too often we create moral shortcuts about who to care for or not to care for, based on whatever our culture or group of friends agree on, allowing us to ignore obvious problems right in front of us.

If you find someone beat up and bloody on the side of the road, literally or metaphorically, help them if you can. No matter who they are. No shortcuts or pre-defined rules are allowed.

[1] Luke 10:30b
[2] From Matthew 22:39