Why Americans Don't Get the Good Samaratin Parable

If the Samaritan was an American he would have told the half-dead man that he would get justice for the wounded person and the rest of the story would be about hunting down and killing the bandits. There was a recent People magazine cover featuring a woman and how she escaped from her would be kidnapper and murderer. And all I could think of was how you never hear the story of the ones that don’t escape – because we have no admiration for them, nor frankly, does our culture have any compassion for them.  This is why, I think, you can go into a church and not a single cross will have Jesus’ body on it.

When we say Jesus triumphed over death, we’re being inaccurate. It was God in the first person, commonly called father though mother would suit just as well, it was that person of god who raised Jesus. This marked the victim as favored of God. Jesus’ story is not one of a potential victim that escaped. It was a story of God hearing the cries of the suffering and honoring them above all others.  All kingdoms of all the world will bow to the victim king.

The story of the Good Samaritan is not a story of “everyone is your neighbor,” it’s not about being nice to everyone, it’s an instruction to be neighbor to those in need. It’s also, given the poison of the Protestant work ethic, a call to accept help. A lot of the resentment folks have for the people who use social services is that they themselves are too proud to ask for help. They’ve been brainwashed into thinking poverty is weakness of character.

How people miss that Jesus was champion of the unclean, the stranger, the least of these who he identifies with, is beyond me. In my Bible study when I told the “American” version of the story, someone responded by saying how they were not raised in a church with a “Social Justice” point of view. I let it go but I wanted to scream, “This is not social justice, this IS THE GOSPEL!”

Now certainly, social justice done right is about helping the suffering, however there are also people of the oppressing class that suffer at the hands of their own. Are there degrees of suffering? Yes of course, but I hesitate to limit the term victim to only the oppressed. What’s been really bothering me lately is how victims who find the courage to talk about their sexual abuse are inundated with death threats and other further abuse, while the accused get slaps on the wrist or appointed to high office. 

Now there will be those who say this has always gone on and it’s good that it’s coming out into the light, and in fact, yes this has always gone on, but frankly to me it just seems that the perpetrators are emboldened. In the wake of 2016, there are at least six convicted sex offenders openly running for public office. While I admit we treat sex offenders who have done their time more harshly than other former prisoners, I still think running for office is a sign of emboldening the victimizer.

This is partly why I won’t use the Good Samaritan story as a story about loving your enemies. I mean it is in there given what a Samaritan was to the Israelites listening, but I believe focusing on that obscures the emphasis on the suffering. Christ on the cross is not suffering because we’ve sinned, but rather is suffering in solidarity with all who suffer.

And for those who say a crucifix with a corpus is too morbid, I say Christianity is morbid. It’s uncomfortable; it’s not easy, because it centers the suffering. Our Lord suffered. Not so that we may bring suffering on ourselves in imitation, but rather that we recognize Him in the suffering and don’t cross to the other side of the road.