Religion on the Jericho Road
The wounders on "the Jericho Road" would include adulterers, child-abusers, gossips, slanderers, war-mongering military people and arms dealers. They include multinational company bosses and apathetic stockholders whose only concern is how much they’re going to rake in no matter how predatory the companies are. They include the viciously bitter, the gossips, the seducers, the hoarders and the hedonists. And on and on.
But we’re not to forget the context that generated the Luke 10:25-35 story Christ told. A religious teacher asked a profoundly important question (10:25) though there’s the suggestion that his motives were in need of mending (10:25,29). Still, it was a major question and the man wanted to know what he had "to do". When Christ told him he was correct and that he should now get on with it, the man balked and turned the situation into a biblical/theological debate. What he had "to do" was put on the back burner and he wanted to know the correct view about a related issue. Israel’s massive summary of their ethical response to God was a "love commandment". Every day the nation committed to that command to love (first) the Lord their God and then (second) the neighbor as the self.
Before Christ was done the Bible teacher may not have known the technical definition of "neighbor" but he knew what it meant to love or not to love. And he knew that the priest and levite that hurried on by hadn’t loved the man who’d lost his cloak and whatever else he had.
Exodus 23:4-5 says, "If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure to help him with it." Deuteronomy 22:1-3 says, "If you see your brother’s ox or sheep straying, do not ignore it but be sure to take it back to him. If the brother does not live near you or if you do not know who he is, take it home with you and keep it until he comes looking for it. Then give it back to him. Do the same if you find your brother’s donkey or his cloak or anything he loses. Do not ignore it."
The Exodus text has "enemy" and the Deuteronomy text has "brother" but what the two texts have in common is that the hearer of God’s will was to help! I know we’re probably missing the niceties of the debates that went on about these matters but when you place those two texts alongside a man lying in the ditch, you wonder, don’t you?
We could debate until the cows come home about how the Samaritan, the priest and the levite viewed the status of the man in the ditch and what their differences were, but we’re sure of one thing. One of them acted in love toward the victim. Jesus didn’t ask the teacher, "The man lying in need, whose neighbor was he?" He asked him, "Who loved the man lying in the road?" When the Bible teacher admitted the truth he had come back to the heart of the commandment—love!
A religion that restricts love only to those that love us is bad religion. To embrace a religion like that means you have to make a decision about the God you worship and there is where our religion is tested. If the one true God is one that loves his enemies then to be called his sons and daughters (see Luke 6:35-36) we cannot love only those that love us. If we are called to live in the image of God and we restrict our love to those that love us we are creating a god in our own image.
A religion that restricts the love of God to a fraction of the children he created while, because it pleases him, he created the rest to eternally consciously and ceaselessly torment them—that religion is a thief and a robber. Yes, such a doctrine has been and is being taught! A God like that has more in common with the robbers that deliberately violated the man than he has with the "good Samaritan".
So God came by a saw a planet full of people, lying in a galactic ditch, and what did he do? Not only did he not go to the aid of countless millions of them—he destined them for it? That? That is good religion?
Once more, that kind of religious teaching is a thief and a robber! It robs people of the one true God who has come to us in and as Jesus Christ.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
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