The Samaritan Groom
I was inspired by Bruce C.’s recent post on poverty and Steve Reed’s comment on the scriptures yielding multiple interpretations. Specifically, I was inspired to think about the parable of the Good Samaritan.
I do not reject the standard interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which the point is that everyone is our “neighbor.” I accept the authority of both tradition and the prophets.
But there is another interpretation, which actually fits the story better.
The easiest way to make that interpretation clear is to retell the Good Samaritan story. With a few details changed such that we can read it as for the first time, without preconceptions.
A man came to the Master and said, Master, it is said that we should love and cherish our family members as ourselves. But who then is my family member?
And Jesus, answering, said, A certain woman was an orphan from youth. When she went to school, she fell into a student ward with many single young men. At a ward dance, she was standing by herself.
By chance, a certain young man who was an athlete, academically gifted, and the ward’s Elder’s Quorum President wandered by her, but he did not ask her to dance.
And likewise, a young man who had many of the same interests and who shared class and ethnic characteristics with the young woman also passed her by without asking her to dance.
But a certain young man who had no particular status and perhaps nothing obvious in common with the young woman looked on her, and thought she was sweet and fair. And went to her, and asked her to dance, and took her on dates, and made plans with her, and asked her to marry him.
Which of these three, thinkest thou, became family member to the woman?
Clearly only the latter. In this updated form the parable is not teaching that everyone is our family member. It is teaching that who is our family member is determined by something other than their status, rank, prestige, or shared ethnic and cultural background. It is determined by who wants to be.
But that is also the straightforward reading of the Good Samaritan parable. The lawyer begins by asking who is neighbor is. The Savior tells the parable and then concludes by asking which of the three was neighbor to the injured man. And the lawyer answers, only the Samaritan. By implication, the other two were not. Not everybody is our “neighbor.” The straightforward reading of the Good Samaritan story is that we should be neighborly to people who are neighborly to us.
I love this interpretation. It feels generous and expansive. A duty of universal care for everybody, everywhere, is a crushing and impossible burden. It is alien to real love. But the idea that we may find neighbors anywhere is joyful and freeing.
In the gospel terms, we are like pioneers on the edge of the vast, virgin lands of an empty continent. We each of us are not required or expected to settle the whole thing. But we have the whole terrain before us. We can make any part of it our own, as much as we can possibly handle or want.
Andrew
November 16, 2016
As gentiles I think we see ourselves as the Good Samaritan by default as well. We imagine ourselves as the person doing good to the injured man.
In the original, I imagine the Jewish lawyer would instead himself as the injured man who is in need of help and a foreigner comes to their aid. We should indeed humble ourselves! Is not Christ our “Good Samaritan” and we are the ones in need of help? Would we really reject His aid because of lack of ethnic affinity where our own pagan gods can not and do not help us?
The savior then answers with, as also is common, an extreme example to really draw out the contrast – a Samaritan who is extremely and unusually kind and generous to in the injured Jew, while his own countrymen disregard him and treat him poorly despite being his distant relations and cousins.
So this then is a follow-up to His other teachings – that if our own family disrespects God, worships false gods, turns from goodness, we must still always put God first.
Our neighbors are, therefore, those who follow God’s will. The good Samaritan is a neighbor to us, where the Pharisees who are natural brothers or cousins make themselves our enemies, both by mistreatment and disregarding the will of God.
Vader
November 16, 2016
Good stuff, from you and Andrew.
You needn’t answer, but the thought crossed my mind that your interpretation is semi-autobiographical. It sounds like you.
G.
November 16, 2016
@Andrew, thanks for that.
@Vader, no. Well, it is semi-autobiographical in that in that I asked my wife on dates and then we got married. But in the very peculiar status hierarchies that prevail in BYU student wards, I was more of a priest or a levite.
Vader
November 16, 2016
[I figure the equivalent of Samaritans would be non-member BYU students. Me, I was the social equivalent of a leper.]
Wm Jas
November 16, 2016
“Love thy neighbor.”
“Who is my neighbor?”
“Well, who was neighbor to the man who fell among thieves?”
“He who showed him mercy.”
Most obvious conclusion: “Love thy neighbor” means “Love those who show you mercy” — but Jesus didn’t say that. He just said, “Go and do thou likewise.”
Ivan Wolfe
November 16, 2016
From NT Wright:
“Jesus’ reply, one of the most brilliant miniature stories ever composed, has often been misunderstood by moralizing, existentializing, or hasty exegesis. The point was not that the Samaritan regarded the Jew in the ditch as his neighbour (he did, but that was not the thrust of the story). Nor was the story simply a moral encouragement, urging its hearers either to help people out in times of trouble or to recognize human worth in those one habitually despises. The point was subtler, and more directly related to the actual agenda behind the lawyer’s question. What he was really interested in was where the covenant boundary-line had to be drawn. Jesus’ question at the end of the story was not simply, how then should you behave towards those you normally despise? It was sharper: which of the three turned out to be neighbour to the Jew in the ditch? In other words, which person in the story counts as the ‘neighbour’ whom the shorthand summary of Torah commands that you shall love as yourself? The answer was obvious, though revolutionary: the Jew in the ditch discovered that the Samaritan was his neighbour.
And, by implication, he also discovered that the two other travellers on the road were not his neighbours . . .”
Wright, N. T.. Jesus Victory of God V2: Christian Origins And The Question Of God (Kindle Locations 6286-6290).
G.
November 16, 2016
@Wm Jas, @Ivan Wolfe,
Just so. Like a lot of obvious points, it turns out to be obvious. But the obvious has grown over with so much sentimentalizing over the years that I am only seeing the obvious now in the middle of my life.
Bruce Charlton
November 16, 2016
Valuable stuff here – thanks to all.
Bookslinger
November 17, 2016
“….I am only seeing the obvious now in the middle of my life.”
Lucky you. It took me quite a bit longer. And I am still making shocking discoveries of my own stupidity and blindness. Each discovery also includes an increased awareness that I have not been sufficiently humble.
Yet the Giver, in His wisdom and grace, did and has blessed me with perception of other things that are not obvious to the majority.
ajb
December 8, 2016
On this interpretation, what does “Go and do thou likewise.” mean?
G.
December 8, 2016
Make neighbors, like the Samaritan,
or acknowledge as neighbors those who are neighbors to us, like the man who fell among thieves.
Andrew
December 9, 2016
Early Saints understood the parable to have an allegorical meaning where Christ is the Samaritan who saves us, fallen in sin.
“This allegorical reading was taught not only by ancient followers of Jesus, but it was virtually universal throughout early Christianity”
Therefore, God’s Son is your neighbor. We love God with everything and Jesus Christ as ourselves.
(https://www.lds.org/ensign/2007/02/the-good-samaritan-forgotten-symbols?lang=eng)
If you understand the last commandment as a command to act like the Samaritan, it means a command to follow Christ – to act like the Apostles (who were also commanded to shake-the-dirt off from the towns that rejected them – who showed themselves to not be neighbors?) and spread His Gospel.
Andrew
December 9, 2016
Even if you want to ignore allegorical interpretations, which seems especially foolish considering His other teachings, *and* you accept that “Go and do thou likewise” is a command from Jesus to “show mercy” to those in great need, or specifically who have been assaulted by evil men – I still can’t draw out it to mean “love everyone everywhere equally no matter what” in my mind. The robbers weren’t neighbors, etc.
This interpretation should lead us to act like how we imagine an idealized Knight-errant would, not as a communist.
Darren
December 9, 2016
I think it dangerous to not consider all of Jesus’ teachings in regard to being justified, as the lawyer questioned. To the rich young ruler, Jesus essentially said to stop thinking like a cultural Jew (being wealthy means being blessed/honored by God, so strive to be wealthy, keep the Torah, and view the poor and needy as not blessed). Jesus LOVED him, but wanted him to obey the Torah on a deeper level. He taught this exact lesson to Zacchaeus, and you see Zacchaeus’ response to the poor. Jesus told him salvation was his for his faith and obedience.
Wright is correct in that Jesus taught the lawyer who was in the kingdom (those who loved as God did – especially the needy), and those who were not (prideful, religious Temple-goers). But it is a grave mistake to take away that we are to go and discern who is “in” and who is “out.” That is not what Jesus’ thrust was. That point was indeed a mini-lesson to the lawyer who needed a worldview shakedown. He needed to see that all his temple cult buddies weren’t in, and that some despised ones were. But Jesus’ final words were to “Go and do likewise.” Based on all other encounters Jesus had, he was basically telling the lawyer to get back to the heart of the Torah – loving anyone he encountered in need as a means of responding to the greatest commandment of loving God with all that you are. Discerning who’s in and out will reveal itself as we love others. With due respect to Wright, it is hardly the thrust of the lesson, and has more potential to lead to pride as the Pharisees did this on a regular basis.
Bruce Charlton
December 12, 2016
@Darren “Based on all other encounters Jesus had, he was basically telling the lawyer to get back to the heart of the Torah – loving anyone he encountered in need as a means of responding to the greatest commandment of loving God with all that you are. ”
But surely that *must* be wrong for the reasons articulated earlier in the thread – it is obviously physically as well as emotionally impossible to love evryone and to *materially* assist everyone who ‘needs’ it (which is actually everyone, to some degree – therefore 7 billion people); and we indeed never see any scriptural example of it.
I have read a couple of examples of individuals who tied (and obviously never got near suceeding) to put this into effect, and it was simply a suicide on their part – and accompanied by a gross neglect of other Christian duties. They became pitifully deluded rather than holy.
If Christianity is claimed to teach something so obviously absurd and futile, and as a central tenet, then that severely damaged the credibility and coherence of the faith – and I think it is no coincidence that this aspect has been so strongly emphasised by ‘modernisers’ and liberals in the main churches who are (whether they themselves acknowledge to themselves) fifth columnists covertly trying to destroy Christianity.
In a metaphysical sense the whole of creation coheres only because of Love, and we are all intrinsically involved with one another (not just other people, but every-thing that is)… However this ‘cosmic’ aspect of reality is *not* what the parable is about. It is – from context, meant as practical advice – about the conduct of living.