The parable of The Good Samaritan is a story in the bible, referenced elsewhere, but predominantly told in Luke 10:29–37. I’ll give a brief rendition here, in my own words, but please do go read it yourself.
Some rando jewish dude is walking down a dangerous road between Jerusalem to Jericho. Dude gets mugged by some thieves, and they really do a number on him, leaving him nearly dead.
For real, this road was in the hood.
Duder is lying there in the gutter, wounded and just in real bad shape. So, along comes “A Priest” who takes one look at the situation and is like “Nope!” and takes off. Dick!
Then “A Levite” comes wandering by and looks around like, “Hell naw.” and he leaves the dude there to die too! What the hell!?
Finally, we’re told, “A Samaritan” comes walking by. And, in a major show of big-dick energy, stops and helps the guy. He disinfects and doctors his wounds, puts him on his donkey, and hauls him to the nearest motel 6. He tells the owner of the inn to look after him, throws him a few ducats, and says,” Ay bro, take care of my guy here and send me the bill.”
That’s about it. Again, I encourage you to go check it out for yourself.
Here’s the thing: I hear people throw around the word “Good Samaritan” like it means “Someone who did something nice for someone else or helped someone in need.” But that is not the point of the story at all. In my opinion, helping people who need help is just par for being a person. Don’t be a dick and help people. Seems pretty basic.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is about so much more than not being an asshole. It’s about going out of your way to help people you don’t like and who may actually be your enemies. At very least, it teaches us to help everyone, regardless to whether or not they believe the same things we believe or have the same politics or not.
You may be thinking, “Okay hippie, where did you get all that?”
It’s a good question. As with the rest of the bible, it’s difficult – if not impossible – to discern the meaning without more context.
There are two kinds of context we can use to understand this parable: biblical context and historical context. Although these two contexts are often at odds, in this case, both ways of seeing this parable point to the same lesson: treat everyone as if they are your neighbor, even your enemies, because they are your neighbor in spacetime. Every thing in every moment is descendent from every other thing in every last moment. Whatever moment you’re experiencing now is a result of whatever you’ve experienced in previous moments. Every moment is connected to every other moment in the universe in this way. You cannot pick apart the universe, dividing it into you and me and they and us without first agreeing on some assumptions based on shared experiences. A two-sided coin assumes two sides of the same material—what point would there be in the two sides of a coin arguing about who is the real coin?
When you take away all the assumptions, it becomes clear that we humans are all much more the same than we are different.
