Samaritan

So the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) has worked its way into popular reference, but today I was confronted with the fact that I might not really understand the story well enough to be a Good Samaritan.

I guess if I found someone lying bleeding and battered on the roadside, I'd probably stop and help that person out. That's what any decent person would do. The Good Samaritan is not a story about what any decent person would do because at least two decent people walked right on by the injured man. Priests, righteous men, and the like. I've heard the story once preached (here's the link, just click on the sermon from 6/15/08) in a way that fleshed out a lot of significant contextual details about the Good Samaritan story: that the road from Jericho to Jerusalem was a long, straight road, infamous for violence and robbery, and that a despised Samaritan would be the biggest target for getting his ass kicked on that road, much more so than an Aaronic priest, giving him great incentive just to hurry on his way, and that the naked victim was virtually unidentifiable, essentially an everyman whose only definite characteristics were that he was beaten half to death on the side of the road: that he was in need.

Today I was driving home from work at 12:30 am, and I passed an everyman with his thumb up under a streetlight along the winding country road to home. Faded baseball cap, orange reflective construction worker vest, blue jeans, cigarette. Everyman. As I watched him diminish in the rearview mirror, I saw him stare long and resignedly at the back of my car. Just another car passing by. And I thought to myself that I didn't know anything about this guy, except that he appeared to be in need of a ride, presumably to somewhere like home, but at least to a better place to spend the night than the side of the road in the middle of rural dark nowhere. I wondered why I was so willing to volunteer at homeless shelters in large, sponsored groups, but not to pick this hitchhiker up. A lot of excuses surfaced immediately because we're quick to excuse ourselves: I was tired, I had a long day behind me and another ahead, this man could be a dangerous psychokiller, no normal person would expect to give hitchhikers a ride, I owe it to my family and fiancee to live safely, and a million more. But I didn't really think the guy was a psychokiller. If someone doesn't own a car and wears a construction vest, that makes him underprivileged and therefore violent? I've always said that love means you give the other person the benefit of the doubt. And I realized that I had no good reason not to help him out. That's the thing about helping people: you can start anytime you decide it's what you want to do.

So after five miles of this mental back-and-forth between the little angel and little devil on either shoulder, I turned my car around and drove back to that intersection, to the streetlight, but he was already gone. I was a little relieved, but also ashamed. If Jesus tells a story illustrating how to love your neighbor, and in that story, the person with the most to lose chose to act in love at great personal risk, then a guy like me can definitely give a guy a simple car ride home without letting pre-judgment or inconvenience stand in the way.

Is "pre-judgment" a sort of etymological precursor to "prejudice"?






Addendum: Today (the day after) I saw him again and I gave him a ride home. It would have been a 10 mile midnight walk. His name was Luke, and he told me his life story, and he told me the key to a successful marriage is communication. He's worked at the same paper mill with the same partner for 15 years. I think he was pretty stoked about not having to walk 10 miles.