The Nuance of Neighbors

A Good Samaritan: someone who goes out of their way to help another person, even if there’s no immediate benefit to them.

Many of us are familiar with that term, even those who aren’t “versed” in Biblical narrative. We know it’s a story from the Bible and that it encourages us to be better people. All of us can agree that if we had more Good Samaritans in the world, life would be a whole lot better.

However, the story of the Good Samaritan is much more racist than people realize.

To understand this ghastly accusation I’ve made, we need to break down not just the story itself, but the circumstances in which the story was told.

The Good Samaritan was a parable, a fictional story with a moral or spiritual message, that Jesus told back in ancient Israel. Jesus went around for three years teaching people about the Kingdom of Heaven and how God truly worked, often with parables like this one.

We find a snippet of his three-year ministry in Luke 10, where an Expert in Jewish law approached Jesus to test him. You see, much of what Jesus said put the Jewish leaders on edge. He regularly and publicly called them out on hypocritical behavior.

A simple question was raised: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Both Jesus and the Expert agreed that to inherit eternal life, one had to follow God’s law. Most people would recite the 10 Commandments, but all of them could be summarized into 2: “Love God with all you have” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

That second command became the basis for the Expert’s next question: “Well, who is my neighbor?”

His new question prompted Jesus to tell his famous parable. A traveler gets mugged on the road and left for dead, two people pass him by, and the third stops to help him. Simple, right?

This is where things get interesting. While the summary above is rather bare-bones, the characters Jesus chose hold much more significance.

First up, we have the two men who passed the traveler by. Jesus specifically called them a Priest and a Levite, two very prominent people in Jewish culture. Priests and Levites were the ones who ran the temple, upheld God’s law, and set the spiritual example for the people.

A couple of those laws in Jewish society were “do not touch blood” and “do not touch dead things.” To us, passing the beaten and bloody traveler would be considered heartless. However, to someone who practiced Jewish law, they were technically obeying God’s Word to the letter. They couldn’t touch the man because of all the blood, and if it turned out he was dead, too, they would be considered even more ceremonially unclean and thus unable to perform their holy duties.

This alluded to one of the many things Jesus called the religious leaders out on: following the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law. Of course, that’s a discussion for another day, so we’ll shelf that for now.

Next, we have the third character. The astute reader can already guess who this is: the Good Samaritan. This Samaritan man bandaged the wounded traveler, escorted him to safety, and paid for his lodgings and medical fees.

The fact that Jesus chose a Samaritan for this story generates the racist undertones…but not in the way that one would expect.

A bit of cultural context:

The Israelites are considered God’s “chosen people.” While some interpreted that as “being held to a higher standard,” others took it as “I’m better than everyone else.” Despite the fact that their own law instructed them to be kind to the foreigners within their borders, many Israelites became extremely nationalistic.

So, how do Samaritans factor into this?

At one point in history, the nation of Israel had split into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Each in turn was eventually conquered by foreign powers and many of the people were exiled.

Some foreigners were also relocated into the land of Israel. These people integrated and intermarried with the Jewish remnants still living there. They eventually settled into an area in central Israel called Samaria.

In time, many of the Jewish people were able to return to Israel. However, instead of a joyful reunion with their brethren, they scorned and mistreated the Samaritans. They considered them mongrels, “impure half-breeds” that were no longer a part of God’s promise.

This was the racism Jesus’s story addressed: the Expert’s.

The Expert knew he was supposed to “love his neighbor,” but in the legalistic culture that had developed, he wanted to know exactly who his neighbor was. That way, he could show kindness to whom he wanted and shun everyone else without breaking God’s commands.

Jesus’s parable pulled the rug out from under him. It’s not just the people you like or who are like you that you show love to; your neighbors include those whom you dislike or dislike you in return. Within in this context, this extends to those of a different race.

Racism, and discrimination in general, have been constant thorns in our sides, even to this day. We have America’s melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, Palestine attacking modern-day Israel; even the conflict happening now between Ukraine and Russia. No matter who you are, no matter where you’re from, we are called to be kind and loving toward each other.

Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be an easy act to follow. We still get into fights about where people are from or the color of their skin. Even the account in Luke was left somewhat unresolved.

When Jesus concluded his parable, he asked the Expert who in the story was a neighbor to the Traveler. What many people miss is that his answer was not “the Samaritan.” We all know that the Samaritan was the good neighbor, but that’s not what the Expert said. No, his actual answer, while accurate, was much more heartbreaking.

He replied, “The one who showed mercy.”

He was so rooted in his racism, in his nationalist purity, that he couldn’t even say the word “Samaritan.” Even though who he was supposed to love was laid out clearly for him, he still couldn’t bring himself to utter the name of the people group he had been taught to hate.

Racism and discrimination can spring up from a number of sources: cultural conflicts, individual offenses, childhood upbringing. All of them lead to the same results: hatred, bloodshed, and loss.

However, we’ve seen what happens when people choose to set those aside and treat each other like fellow human beings. Wounds are healed. Lives are saved. We’ve heard it in stories like the Good Samaritan. Some of us have experienced it firsthand.

When the Expert admitted who was the better neighbor, Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” That’s my exhortation to you. The Good Samaritan overcame racial boundaries to show love and save someone’s life. Go and do likewise.