The Untold Story of the Good Samaritan
If you’ve spent any time in a church you’re probably familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan. A man is walking down the road, gets jumped by robbers, beaten and left for dead. As he’s lying by the roadside a priest walks by, sees him and walks on. A few minutes later a Levite (a member of the religious elite) walks by and also walks on. Shortly after that a Samaritan is walking by and stops to help the man. At this point in the story we’re all supposed to throw our arms up in the air and shout “Samaritan! Samaritan! UGH!”
Samaritans at the time were the religious and ethnic enemies of the listeners to this story. You can pretty much substitute any enemy of yours and swap them into this story to challenge your own beliefs about who is good and who is bad.
The second half of this story is that the Samaritan puts this bleeding man on his donkey, takes him to an inn and puts him up for a few nights. He gives the innkeeper two silver coins (anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks wages) and says take care of this guy, any additional charges he’ll pay when he comes back.
Jesus says the Samaritan fulfilled the law by being a good neighbor to someone in need.
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As I’ve always heard this story in church, it’s a warm and fuzzy feel good tale of helping those in need. Pastors came to the end of the story and it was neat and tidy. It went without saying that the attacked man recovered completely, effusively thanked the Samaritan for his help, and went on to lead a productive, clean life, making contributions to the greater society.
In reality, Jesus’ tale seems incomplete and is frustratingly vague on what happened next. Because as anyone in the helping professions (social work, healthcare, non-profits) can tell you, some people will continue to take as long as you continue to give. They will take and take and take, until you’re empty, laying on the floor in an emotional/mental/physical heap. At that point you’ll need your own Good Samaritan!
For imagination’s sake, let’s fill in a few details to this story and then ask what it would look like to be a neighbor to the man in need.
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A man is walking after dark in an area where beatings, robberies, and murders often occur. Much risk can be mitigated by choosing to not go down certain streets or only go to certain areas at certain times. But this man, for whatever reason, seems to consistently make poor choices. Sure, he’s had a rough life and he’s come from a broken home, but he’s also piled onto that years of poor decisions and unwise patterns. Walking down this road at 4am is just another inexplicable action in his chaotic life.
As the sun begins to come up, a priest is walking by. He rose before dawn, to pray, to position his spirit to be locked in to what God is doing in the world. The priest carries the load for perhaps hundreds of people and has razor sharp focus when it comes to serving his community. He sees the bleeding man. His heart goes out to him, but he also does not stop. To touch a bleeding man would make him ritually impure and required a cleansing process before he would be able to perform his priestly duties again. The bleeding man is unfortunate and sad, but wisdom dictates that the priest stay committed to his mission. There are innumerable hurting people in the world and it makes more sense to help those who want to help themselves. He hurries by.
Next comes a young Levite, a zealous member of the religious elite. When he sees the man he is not disturbed or frightened by the sight of him. In fact, this Levite has spent a lot of time in this area of town and seen firsthand the violence that can occur. As he looks in to the face of the bleeding man, it begins to blur with all the hundreds of bleeding faces he’s seen over the years. “You can’t stop for everyone,” he thinks. It’s inefficient and you’ll be overwhelmed by people’s problems. He also walks on.
Later in the day a Samaritan walks by. He sees the bleeding man and makes a decision based on emotion. The Samaritan feels for him and so decides to stop and help. He bandages him up, carries him into town, and takes him to a quiet place to recover from his wounds. The Samaritan tells the inn keeper “Here’s some money to cover the expenses of this man. I will be back in a few days and whatever remaining charges there are you can expense to me.”
Neat and tidy ending.
***
The untold part of the story is this. When the Samaritan comes back a few days later the man is feeling quite a bit better. The man is loving staying in such a nice place and being able to expense whatever he wants to someone else. Rather than eating at the hotel buffet (which is included with the room), he’s been ordering carry out from the most expensive restaurant in town, he’s completely raided the minibar, and ordered a bunch of pay-per-view movies (the $9.99 kind). The Samaritan is understandably upset, what started as an incredibly kind gesture is turning into an ordeal that’s going to cost hundreds of silver coins now. On top of that the inn keeper is really pissed at the Samaritan. Since he’s the guarantor of this troublesome guest, the inn keeper wants assurances that all the expenses are going to be paid for. The bleeding man has been a real pain the neck, constantly calling down to the front desk for more pillows, more shampoo, more blankets, etc. The innkeeper is really hoping that they’ll be finding a new place for this guy to stay. It’s going to take him days to clean up the bleeding man’s trashed room.
The Samaritan has a firm, but compassionate conversation with the bleeding man about how he’s seemingly exploited the kindness of a stranger. The bleeding man is apologetic and shares more of his story and how he came to be in his current position in life. The conversation seems to have a good resolution and the bleeding man (now mostly recovered) checks out of his room the next day.
It didn’t happen all at once, but slowly and surely the Samaritan became more entangled in the life of the Bleeding Man. He wouldn’t hear from him for weeks on end and then out of the blue receive a call from the Bleeding Man, always on Friday evening, asking for something or another. The Samaritan gradually learned more about the Bleeding Man’s story and came to expect a pattern of chaos and mild deception. The man wasn’t a bad person, but he just couldn’t stay out of his own way. The self-sabotage seemed inevitable, willful even.
For the Samaritan it was a struggle to be a neighbor to the bleeding man. In the privacy of his own thoughts he sometimes wished the man would fade out of his life or that he had never stopped on the road that day. Their relationship eventually ended in a manner not inconsistent with other experiences in the bleeding man’s life. The Samaritan increasingly tried to put healthy boundaries up with the bleeding man to keep himself from being inundated. The bleeding man became resentful and increasingly manipulative. One day they got into a disagreement and the bleeding man began to scream at and berate the Samaritan. He told the Samaritan how much he hated him, that the Samaritan was a terrible person, a liar and a complete hypocrite. The bleeding man left town and wasn’t heard from again.
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Our culture focuses a lot on things like “boundaries”, “self-care”, “helping those who help themselves”. Sometimes these otherwise sensible concepts can be a copout from doing what God calls us to do. The way of Jesus is sacrifice, death unto ourselves. He says pick up your cross and follow me. We do not pour out as we are able, but rather pour out as we are called.
Renowned Vulgar Fellow and man after God’s own heart, King David penned the lines:
“As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs after you.”
You don’t get to that point unless you’re poured out. Empty. Dying of thirst.
The story of the Good Samaritan is not necessarily a straightforward, feel good tale of doing something nice for someone else. The compassionate life is not about parachuting into a situation, dropping charity, and then retreating back to our comfortable lives. It’s about choosing to be present with those who are in pain. The untold story can often be messy, entangling and unrewarded.
