Perspective: The View from the Gutter

My charity: water campaign will be open until the end of June.  If you are interested in contributing to this cause, please check out this link:
Clean Water for Tony's Dirty Thirty.

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

The View from the Gutter

All the Law has been fulfilled in a single statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.

Galatians 5:14 (CEB)

I have to wonder if I really want to know

The struggle and the pain that others feel

Do I want to hear the stories I see echoed in their eyes?

Or is this love I say that I'm reflecting even real?

From "Only You Can Save" by Chris Sligh

One day, a religious scholar asks Jesus, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"  Jesus responds with a question of His own, "What is written in the law?  What do you read there?"  The scholar replies, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."  Jesus likes the religious scholar's response.  He says, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

(This story is giving me a strange sense of déjà vu.¹)

The religious scholar then asks, "And who is my neighbor?"

Jesus doesn't simply answer the scholar's question.  Instead, He tells a story.

A man is traveling on a dangerous road when he encounters some robbers who beat him, rob him, and leave him for dead at the side of the road.  A priest approaches and sees the injured man.  More concerned about religious matters than a fellow human's well-being, he crosses the street and continues on his way, unwilling to risk becoming ritually unclean.  Later on, another religious leader approaches and does the same.  Finally, a Samaritan approaches.  Unlike the first two, who leave the injured man at the side of the road to die, the Samaritan gives the injured man first aid, takes him to an inn to take care of him, and pays for the man's room and board.

Jesus asks the religious scholar who acted as a neighbor to the injured man.  Hesitant to say the word Samaritan, the scholar answers, "The one who showed him mercy."  Jesus then says, "Go and do likewise."²

Sometimes we treat Jesus' parables - and, for that matter, other Bible stories - like a Rorschach test.  In the same way we might discover things about ourselves in the images we see in random inkblots, we discover things about ourselves by seeing ourselves in the characters of the stories.  This parable seems to present us with a question and a challenge.  Are we more like the uncaring religious leaders, or are we more like the Good Samaritan?  How can we become more like the Good Samaritan?

I'm beginning to think that this might not be the best way to read this parable.

Let's take a look at the religious scholar's question, "Who is my neighbor?"  Essentially, he's asking, "Who specifically do I have to love?"  Let's face it, we all have people whom we don't want in our neighborhoods: we all have people with whom we don't want to associate.  Maybe we hate them - excuse me, "strongly dislike" them - because of their race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, political views, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, or decisions in life.  Maybe they're individuals who hurt us in the past.

Maybe a better question to ask ourselves would be, "Who isn't my neighbor?"

So often we fail to realize how offensive Jesus' teachings really are.  This parable, which seems to us to be a mere object lesson in doing what is right, would have been deeply offensive to Jesus' original audience.  In Jesus' day, Jews and Samaritans did not get along with each other because of ethnic and religious reasons.  The Jewish people to whom Jesus was speaking would not have considered Samaritans to be their "neighbors."

Maybe we're actually not meant to see ourselves in any of the three people who saw the man dying at the side of the road.  Provided that we're not meant to see ourselves in the robbers or in the innkeeper, who are relatively minor characters, we're left with only one option.

Maybe this parable is meant to give us the view from the gutter.

Allow me to attempt to put this parable into perspective for us.

You're walking back to your car after running some errands.  Suddenly, a masked man emerges from an alley, and, before you can react, he pulls out a knife and stabs you in the abdomen.  You double over in pain, fall into the gutter at the side of the road, and curl up into the fetal position.  The masked man takes your wallet and your cell phone and then disappears into the alley from whence he came.  You are in so much pain you can barely move, and you're bleeding profusely.  You don't see anyone else around.  Without medical help, you will bleed to death.

A few minutes pass.  You see your favorite pastor passing by.  He looks down and says, "My goodness!  What happened to you?"  With some effort you gasp, "Help me!"  Your pastor says, "I'm so sorry.  I'd love to help you, but I have a very important clergy meeting I must attend.  I'll make sure to lift you up in prayer when I get there.  I hope you get the help you need.  God bless you."  He then walks away.

A few more minutes pass.  You see a leader in your church.  Again, you manage to squeak, "Help me!"  She looks down at you and says, "I'd love to help you but I'm leading a Bible study today, and I'm running late.  I'm so sorry."  She walks away.

What seems like an eternity passes.  You look up and see your next-door neighbor looking down at you.  Life in the neighborhood was so much better before such people moved in.  You two have never gotten along: you can't even remember having one civil conversation with this person.  Now you're dying in the gutter, and this "piece of work" is going to have the last laugh.  Your neighbor walks away.

A few minutes later, your neighbor returns, sits down beside you, rubs your shoulder, and says, "I just called 911.  An ambulance is on the way.  Just hang on!"  Your neighbor then reaches out and takes hold of your hand.

You lose consciousness.

You awaken in the intensive care unit of the hospital.  There are tubes in your nose and in your arm.  When your eyes focus, you see your neighbor sitting in a chair beside your hospital bed, watching you attentively.  When the doctor checks in on you, she tells you that though you lost a lot of blood, none of your vital organs were harmed.  She then tells you that your neighbor has remained at the hospital since arriving with you in the ambulance and that your neighbor gave two units of blood for your transfusion.³

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is so much more than a simple challenge to do the right thing.  This parable is a thought experiment intended to utterly destroy our us-versus-them view of the world.

If, in your hour of great need, you were abandoned by two of the people you admire the most and were then saved by one of the people you hate the most, how would your view of humanity change?

First, such an experience would cause a person to think twice about judging people.  If two people you once admired were content to let you die at the side of the road while someone you utterly despised saved your life, then your opinions about all three of these people were obviously dead wrong.  Such an experience would expose you as a poor judge of character who has absolutely no business judging anybody.  Such an experience would prove that you are utterly incapable to see into a person's heart, no matter how well you think you know people.

Second, an experience in the gutter would create in a person a sense of empathy.  Dr. Robin Dease, a pastor in my area, recently pointed out that the Samaritan had compassion on the injured man in the ditch because he knew what it is like to be in the ditch, figuratively speaking.⁴  Samaritans had been ostracized by their Jewish cousins for hundreds of years, so the Good Samaritan knew what it is like to be abandoned and knew how an abandoned person ought to be treated.  The word compassion literally means "co-suffering": to be compassionate is to enter into someone else's suffering.  We cannot truly be compassionate unless we are willing to imagine ourselves in someone else's shoes.

We are called by God to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  Loving our neighbors as ourselves requires that we place ourselves into their shoes.  The Parable of the Good Samaritan is an invitation into the gutters of life to join the afflicted people of the world.  It is not meant to merely change our behavior, but it is meant, rather, to change our view of humanity in general.


Notes:

1. See my previous perspective "Priority One" which examines a parallel story.
2. The discussion between Jesus and the religious scholar, including the Parable of the Good Samaritan, can be found at Luke 10:25-37.  Quotations are taken from the NRSV.
3. I apologize for any medical inaccuracies in this story.
4. Dr. Robin Dease made this observation during a Bible study at the 2014 South Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.

The photograph of the stained glass window was taken by Wikimedia Commons user Romary and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.