Who Then is Thine Enemy?
I made notes over the weekend on a bunch of Good Samaritan ideas. One note was just the title to this post. It included a parable but also a novel and non-obvious insight that I thought was really cool. Now I can’t remember it. So all you will get is the parable.
Christ taught to love our enemies, but no lawyer ever followed him around trying to quibble about what the definition of enemy was. “Master, who then is my enemy?” Probably because everyone at the time would have thought the question so absurd. It was left as a refinement for our times for people to deny that there was a such thing as enemies, probably because in a Christian-inflected culture once you admit that some people or groups are your enemies, the question arises whether perhaps you owe them at least a little basic decency. Or perhaps because one you admit who your enemies are it would be immensely clarifying to all concerned.
Here’s the parable.
A certain man from among the Jews was beaten by robbers who took all he had and left him for dead at the wayside. A priest and a Levite passed by without helping him. A Samaritan passed by and he did help the guy some but he abandoned the guy in an inn with strangers before the guy was well and prioritized making more money over staying around to offer emotional support, which the Samaritan probably would have done if it were a fellow Samaritan who had been injured, basically when you think about it the Samaritan did the bare minimum he could get away with and was probably bigoted against Jews.
Who then was this man’s enemy?
The robbers, but too many people these days would be inclined to say it was the Samaritan.
(This was not the novel point I came up with, but writing this parable just now I realized that even in the Savior’s version where the Samaritan is portrayed as the hero, it is possible to imagine more that the Samaritan could have done. The Good Samaritan parable is not a license for infinite moral blackmail and although ‘reasonable limits’ on charity are often used an excuse to avoid doing anything, there are reasonable limits. The Samaritan had business of his own to go about and at some point had to stop helping to go about it.)
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Zen
February 15, 2025
It is a strange thing, that people deny we have enemies, while simultaneously insisting on a teddy bear Jesus, that makes no hard demands, and is certainly never unpopular.
I am beginning to think, if you can not be unpopular, or politically incorrect, then do you really have anything interesting to say?
E.C.
February 16, 2025
@ Zen,
Was at a writing conference this weekend, and one (really just the one) panel discussion, about words, had the most obnoxious virtue-signaling about ‘you have to use the correct terms that people want you to use’ – which is correct in principle, but taken way too far (in my opinion) by insisting on ‘correct pronouns’. The panel slowly devolved into abject apologies for using possibly offensive terms and wrapped up with post-modernist nonsense about ‘no one sees the same shade of blue you do’. Again, likely true, but every shade of blue is STILL BLUE and not, say, green.
Avoiding offense at the expense of clarity and truth is not kind. Yes, certainly you should be sensitive to some things, but denying reality is not helpful. The truth can be offensive to those who don’t want to hear it.
@ G,
Yep, your parable sounds quite close to the toxic expectations for aid from many quarters. Of course you should consider most people your neighbor, and of course you should help them in their times of need. That doesn’t mean you have to necessarily go beyond your own means to do so.