The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
July 15, 2007
Vol. 10 no. 27

Everything But...
           There really weren’t a lot of Samaritans at any one time, but of course, we are in search of the Good Samaritan, and that is the point of the parable - there was only one!
           This famous parable, narrated only by Luke, marks the intersection of two ideas. For one, the generosity of spirit to help someone in serious trouble you don’t know has never been particularly obvious. Not wanting to get involved is the slogan of many a big city passer-by, and considering the litigious nature of our society, it is not often wise to help another person in distress for fear of being sued for increasing their pain. “Good Samaritan” laws have been enacted in many a jurisdiction to protect the kind and selfless intentions of would-be rescuers. Still, we think three times before helping someone left for dead on the side the road.
           The second idea is who would you accept helping you? If you are lying there half dead, would knowing that a particular person or nationality or ethnic/racial group helped you push you over edge? That is the real point of Samaritan, for Jews considered them religious frauds who pretended to be Jews, yet maintained their own central temple at Mount Gerizim, reading their own unique version of the Torah. The Samaritans were supposedly a mixed ethnic group of people who occupied the region during the Babylonian Exile and simply were unclean in the eyes of Jerusalem. To have a Samaritan help you would be to worsen your condition and threaten your soul. God certainly would not allow these impure charlatans to endanger your faith.
           Samaritans, however, are everywhere, and it is God who has ushered them into our presence to save us.