Note: This column was originally published in June of 2019. While some of the details mentioned are dated, hopefully the question asked is still worthy of consideration.
“And who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asked Jesus.
It was a follow-up question to his initial inquiry (done as a test), asking, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
In the story, as told in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus answered the question with a question: “What is written in the law? How do you read?”
The lawyer answered, quoting two passages of what we now call the Old Testament. “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.”
Well, it’s easy enough to love God—or so it would seem. But what about this neighbor stuff? Are we talking about the family next door? Our local community? Our fellow countrymen? Our race or ethnic group? Just who constitutes a neighbor? Who exactly are we supposed to love as yourself?
Hence the lawyer’s question.
Jesus went on to tell his famous Parable of the Good Samaritan; that ironic tale of how a man, traveling a dangerous road, “fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing and wounded him and departed, leaving him half dead.”
The irony was that the person who rescued him; the one who tended to his wounds, took him to an inn to recover, and paid his expenses was not the priest who happened to pass by (presumably you’d think a holy man would help without pause) or the Levite, a respectable man in Jewish society and a fellow countryman.
Rather it was the despised Samaritan—the outcast, the other, the enemy who was considered unclean and unfit by Jewish standards of the day. It was he who did the good deed, who rose above the prejudices and animosities of that time and place and within that society. Apparently, he did not see the wounded man as an enemy to be ignored and left to his fate, but rather as a fellow human in need of help.
“There but for the grace of God go I” seemed to be his motivation.
Nor apparently did he worry that the thieves might still be around and stopping to lend a helping hand might put him at risk.
“Now which of these three do you think was a neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?” Jesus asked at the end of his parable.
The lawyer replied, “The one who showed mercy on him.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
* * *
‘Go and do likewise’ was the title of the sermon given by Scott Herald, the pastor of the Fowlerville First United Methodist Church at the recent July 14th Sunday service. I happened to be in attendance, accompanying my wife.
The pastor (if I may paraphrase) noted that we are so familiar with a Biblical passage like the Parable of the Good Samaritan, having heard it so many times, that we don’t think it can teach us anything new or that “it is no longer of real value to us.”
He went on to say that the power of the Bible, the reason it speaks across the ages, is that while it remains fixed, we don’t. Each of us brings our thoughts, beliefs, background, circumstances, anxieties, and aspirations, along with our hurts and hopes to the table. Whatever morsels we consume, whatever nourishment we receive, is therefore unique and special to us.
“The message won’t change,” Pastor Herald said, “but your personal interpreter will apply the passage to you in a way that is specific to you.”
For the Christian, as the pastor pointed out, this interpreter is considered to be the Holy Spirit.
I’m ill-equipped and rarely inclined to discuss the finer points of theology. As for the Holy Spirit, I won’t presume to say this commentary is the result of divine inspiration. I’ll give credit instead to my writer’s muse and an urge to offer my point-of-view on the world around me, along with current events.
On this morning my muse was still half-asleep as I listened to the message, paying attention but not aroused. It seemed like one more Sunday sermon, and I’ve heard more than a few. On occasion, I find them thought provoking, usually the ones that touch on social justice. And, while there’s nearly always something to chew on, to ponder and reflect upon, I’ll confess I’ve often found that many sermons seem more concerned with the hereafter than the here-and-now and with examining the scriptural architecture than offering practical application.
However, that may be my shortcoming. Perhaps I don’t listen closely enough; am not as attentive as I should be. Maybe I miss the point.
What stirred the muse with this sermon, what connected the dots, what made it relevant (for me) as a message about the here-and-now, came later that day as I read the news. There was, front and center, the now famous tweets by the President (Trump), criticizing the four Congresswomen by stating that they “….originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly... and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how....”
Politics is politics, often hard-knuckled, but the four ladies are American citizens—not foreigners. However, they are women of color—minorities, if you will—and two of them practice the Islam faith. Three of them were born in the United States, so there’s no place for them to go back to. This is home. The other Congresswoman, although born in another country, is now a naturalized citizen—as are countless others of our countrymen, including the First Lady.
Reading about the presidential tweet that afternoon, witnessing the support it’s gained from many people in the days since then, there seems to be a concerted effort to portray them as outcasts—and by extension tar others like them with the same brush.
Apparently in the view of some, they (and others like them) fail to pass the litmus test of being ‘a real American’ because their parents or grandparents or other kinsmen arrived here more recently than others—or more to the point, they fail because their ancestors came from a certain part of the world or practice a certain faith or have a certain skin tone.
The four Congresswomen are being attacked as well for their political and social views; accused of “being unpatriotic.” Others with similar opinions are, likewise, under the gun.
I didn’t think that old dog could still hunt, trying to discredit a political or social viewpoint by questioning a person’s loyalty, but apparently he’s on the prowl.
While the tweets dominated the headlines that day—and in the days since—there was also the news of ICE’s intention to begin rounding up immigrants for deportation on a mass scale, the accompanying speculation that innocent victims would get caught up in the dragnet, plus there were the ongoing stories of the asylum seekers being imprisoned at our southern borders, kept in crowded wire cages, and of children separated from parents.
* * *
“And who is my neighbor?”
Is it the President, whether you agree with his remarks or find them offensive? Is it the four Congresswomen, whether you support their positions or consider them radical? Is it the families facing deportation? Is it those people confined in wire cages?
The Good Book says that God loves us all—or, at least, that’s what I’ve been hearing since I was in short pants. But I’ve known for a long time that not everyone believes this.
Nor do they embrace the sentiment that “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.”
On the contrary, they believe that God loves them and their kind and that Jesus loves their children, but not necessarily someone else’s.
However, that said, I am not much at being holier-than-thou or casting stones at others given that I’m far from being a saint or devoid of any character flaws. Still, I’ve never had much patience for rationalization or self-deception, the ease in which (to quote the Simon & Garfunkel song) “…a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
Nor do I regard hypocrisy—the deliberate and calculated kind—as a justifiable political expediency, shrugged off as ‘no big deal.’
Certainly, it’s a rough world out there, even dangerous at times. Not everyone plays by the same rules or harbors kind and benevolent intentions towards me, my kin, or my country.
I’m well aware that there are those who regard my beliefs—or any belief that’s contrary to their own—as heresy, a judgment that they would use to silence or persecute.
I realize as well that there are people out there—in this country and elsewhere in the world—who see me, or those like me, as the enemy. Who would not hesitate to cast a few stones.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world—whether between individuals, societies, cultures, or nations—so baring the teeth and letting loose a snarl and keeping the guard up would seem a prudent defense.
As for this neighbor thing… well, most people would not expand the definition to include those who would do them harm.
Fair enough.
But, too often, we seem inclined to create outcasts because someone looks different, holds a contrary belief, comes from another culture, or is perceived as a threat to our way of life. In other words, they’re not our kind. They’re not us, rather they’re them. The stranger in our midst.
There also seems to be an innate reflex to find a scapegoat rather than seek a common ground.
It seems the situation isn’t much different today than it was when the Jews despised the Samaritans and the Samaritans responded in kind. Or vice versa. Individual attitudes, the manner in which societies function, haven’t progressed as far as we’d wish or imagine. Human behavior—here, there, and everywhere—seems similar in this respect.
* * *
“Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other,” Lincoln said in his second inaugural address as the Civil War neared its conclusion. He was speaking, of course, of Americans from the North and South.
Proclaiming that “God is on our side” has been and still is a wide-held claim.
But Lincoln added the wise counsel that “The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”
What those purposes are in our current day and age, I don’t presume to know. Or how it all will unfold. I’m not of the “hell and damnation” school of thought; more of the “All things are full of weariness” and “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
As I scan the current scene in this country I call home, it seems politics and ideology hold a firmer loyalty in the hearts and minds of many than does human empathy.
Like others, I bemoan the erosion of good manners that’s occurring in our civil discourse and even in our personal interactions. Courtesy, as the late art historian Kenneth Clark defined it, is “the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people’s feelings by satisfying our own egos” and, as such, is a commendable social and personal virtue.
I’m discouraged as well that a sympathetic attitude towards the plight of others, the less fortunate or those in difficult straits, is seen by some as a sign of weakness; an imprudent public policy rather than as an act of compassion born of confidence and strength.
Yet despite that ‘weary’ assessment, I’m hopeful as well; optimistic that “the better angels of our nature” will prevail. Perhaps my muse wears rose-colored glasses, or maybe all those Sunday sermons have had an impact.
“And who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asked.
Jesus never answered the question directly. Instead he told the parable and then posed still another question, “Who was the better neighbor of the three?”
The point of the story, it seems, is not “who your neighbor is” but the kind of neighbor you choose to be. Or ought to be.
“The one who showed mercy” was the answer offered.
But it’s up to us to “Go and do likewise.”
Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan journalist and editor-publisher of the ‘Fowlerville News & Views’—a weekly newspaper.
Our ancestors who came to the US had hard times. We live in good times comparatively. Seems like we should find it easier to be kind to others.