The Right Role Models

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Oh, the Good Samaritan! We love that story, don’t we? This self-sacrificial, compassionate stranger who stops to help an injured man that the religious folk couldn’t be bothered with. We want to be that Samaritan – that wonderful, admirable human!

But I think we lose sight of the fact that Jesus’ listeners were probably a bit horrified by this tale. They hated Samaritans. HATED them. And lest we get self-righteous about this, they felt like they were quite justified in hating them because the Samaritans were the heretics – the ones who twisted the religious systems of the Israelites and thought they had it right and the Jews had it wrong. (Pause a moment and consider who you look at in our world today feeling quite certain they have it all wrong.)

The very idea that Jesus would use a SAMARITAN as a positive role model in one of his parables is absolutely astonishing. It would be like him telling us a story today where the bad guys were an obnoxious TV preacher (oh, of course – he's ridiculous) and a rich megachurch pastor (yeah, he’s just about the power and prestige) and then the good guy, the one we are supposed to model ourselves after, is a radical Muslim.

(Wait – what?!??)

Yes, it’s that astonishing.

We love the message of the Good Samaritan story – help those in need! Be good to people! Show the love of Christ! I think we don’t realize that Jesus was also pointing out that often the heretics do a better job of showing the love of Christ than his own people do.

Ouch.

A couple of lessons I get from this. One, we need to be humbly honest about our failings in this area. That one command Jesus gave us? To love? We stink at it. “We” meaning each of us individually and the church as a whole. We talk a good game, but if we don’t realize how little the world is seeing of the love of Christ in the people that make up His body these days, then we are not paying attention.

And two, we need to stop demonizing those outside of our little self-righteous circles as much as we do. Christians don’t have the corner on goodness – Lord knows, we never have. There are unbelievers out there putting us to absolute shame. They’re giving their money sacrificially. They’re showing kindness to strangers. They’re speaking peace in hostile situations. They're forgiving and restoring their enemies.

And they’re doing it without expecting the recipients to listen to any kind of religious presentation, formal or casual, much less expecting them to actually convert to their beliefs. They have no ulterior motives, selfish or otherwise. They do these things simply because they are the right things to do. Just like the Good Samaritan did.

Again, they put us to shame.

Let me challenge us all to take a closer look at the people we are trying to emulate in our society. We're putting a lot of folks on pedestals who are about power and dogma, not about love . . . people who would walk by that wounded man on the highway and teach us to do the same. 

Jesus had a word for me today; I hope you hear it, too.

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