Religious Conservatives Don't Fully Understand the Good Samaritan

[Soyeong]

Our perspective is that God does not need our good works and they do not sway God's attitude towards us, however we should do good works for the sake of our neighbor and their wellbeing. Lutherans are in this sense humanistic.

God said that what He commanded was for our own good, not for His good, so I completely agree that God does not need our good works, yet God nevertheless wants us to do good works because Bible is full of examples where God was pleased by faithful obedience and angered by disobedience. God does not command us to repent and return back to doing good works all throughout the Bible and then show contempt or indifference when we are faithful to do so.

 

[Soyeong]

But there are political conservatives in China who oppress the Body of Christ.

That's why a Christian's first thought should be to the nation of which he is a citizen, the Kingdom of Heaven and what affects his fellow citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, wherever in this world they may be deployed by the Lord.

But that has absolutely nothing to do with what the OP was speaking about. Dale was not speaking about every type of religious conservative all over the world and to impose that meaning on his words would be to deliberately misunderstand them.

 

[Douglas Hendrickson]

Jesus created a parable to present a certain point.

It's His point, not your point.

You're trying to argue that the Samaritan was good to a Jew in order to ingratiate himself and his people to Jews.

Jesus stated that doing good for a good return was not good.

Your point is not His point.

My point would be that the Samaritan was "neighbor" unto the person beaten and robbed in his acts of mercy. Same as Jesus's point.

Perhaps based on some other story you get that insight into what Jesus would think were the motivations of the Samaritan; he did not explicitly give us any motivations of the Samaritan - fact was, and this is the important fact, he had compassion on him.

It's just like you saying:

He would have performed the good act out of a good heart, expecting no gratitude.

THAT IS NOT PART OF THE STORY.
None of the motivations of the Samaritan are given us in the story - for you to speculate he "had a pure heart," that is the only reason he might have possibly done it, that is nothing but speculation.
NOT PART OF THE STORY.
Why is there any need to speculate about his motivations. The point of the story is what he did when the religious Jews did nothing. What made him "a neighbor unto."
Neighbors can do many good deeds without having a pure heart, I would think.

 

[Doug Melven]

The Good Samaritan parables does not seek to bring out the ethnicity of the Samaritan. Jesus uses Samaritans because those were the people that the Jews absolutely hated. The Jews did not much care for Gentiles, but these Samaritans occupied Jewish land and were half-breeds.
The people who should have helped, the priest and the Levite who were Jewish, did nothing but walk by. A person who the Jews hated, did do something. It did not have to be a Samaritan, it could have been anybody that this questioner hated. But Jesus knew he would have hated a Samaritan, so He used that to make a point. Don't make more of something than what is already there.

I apologize if this has already been covered. I only read through the 1st page of responses, not all of the rest.

 

[Dale]

You need to take that verse out of context in order to end up a full prohibition against judging because the next thing he said was that we should first take the plank out of our own eye so that we can see clearly to take the speck out of our brother's eye. None of these verses can be obeyed without judging:

John 7:24 Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”

Leviticus 19:15 You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.

Ezekiel 33:8 If I say to the wicked, O wicked one, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked person shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.

Ephesians 5:11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

Matthew 7:16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?

Proverbs 31:9 Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.

Galatians 6:1 Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.

You did grant that the NT does speak about expelling people from the community and that is again impossible to do without judging. The truth is that we can't go through life without making judgements every day and we need to judge righteously, not hypocritically because the same standard that we use to judge others will be used to judge us.

It is possible give a warning without issuing a final judgment. You say that we make judgments every day, but these can be tentative judgments. There is only one example of a man being thrown out of the church in the NT and that was a man who was sleeping with his mother. It is hard to imagine a more extreme case. Also, as individuals and ordinary church members, we could leave these judgments to those charged with making these decisions.

 

[Dale]

A religious conservative is straightforwardly a conservative who is a member of a religion, which is predominantly Christian. I don't see what this has to do with Pharisees or why you'd feel the need to use it as slur. If anything, the Sadducees were conservatives and the Pharisees were progressives, who believed that the Law was open to interpretation rather than a strict literal interpretation, who added their own traditions and flexible interpretations of the Law.

You say that the Sadducees were conservatives. Hal Lindsay, famous for his end times commentaries, said that the Sadducees were the religious liberals of the time. Of course, this wouldn't be the first time HL has been wrong.


You say that religious conservative is "a conservative who is a member of a religion."

There are a number of characteristics that set a "religious conservative" apart from a conservative who belongs to a church. To the religious conservative, the old fashioned way is the correct way. Things should be done the way they were done fifty or a hundred years ago.

Also, they tend to be single-issue voters, at least if you go by what they say. Take the religious conservatives who live in the county I live in, for example. To them prayer-in-schools is the issue, or abortion is the issue. They don't care about war or peace, the crime rate, or if the economy collapses. They vote on issues like prayer-in-schools, although there is 0% chance of Congress passing such a law. If Congress did pass it, the courts would strike it down. Either religious conservatives don't understand this or they don't care.


A key characteristic of religious conservatives is that they cannot separate religion from politics. When everyone else can see where the line should be drawn, they can't.


The Pharisees in the New Testament are a bit different. To the Pharisees, Judaism was about rules. There are rules and commandments in the OT, and the function of Rabbis is to endlessly elaborate the rules. The restriction of "neighbor" to Jews is one case where Jesus did not agree with their summary of the OT law, or the way they applied it.

 

[Soyeong]

You say that the Sadducees were conservatives. Hal Lindsay, famous for his end times commentaries, said that the Sadducees were the religious liberals of the time. Of course, this wouldn't be the first time HL has been wrong.


You say that religious conservative is "a conservative who is a member of a religion."

There are a number of characteristics that set a "religious conservative" apart from a conservative who belongs to a church. To the religious conservative, the old fashioned way is the correct way. Things should be done the way they were done fifty or a hundred years ago.

Also, they tend to be single-issue voters, at least if you go by what they say. Take the religious conservatives who live in the county I live in, for example. To them prayer-in-schools is the issue, or abortion is the issue. They don't care about war or peace, the crime rate, or if the economy collapses. They vote on issues like prayer-in-schools, although there is 0% chance of Congress passing such a law. If Congress did pass it, the courts would strike it down. Either religious conservatives don't understand this or they don't care.

You described your view of religious conservatives, but I don't see where you contrasted that with a conservative who is a member of a religion. There is nothing in the definition of "religious" that indicates a particular stance on politics. If someone views being in favor of abortion as being in favor of slaughtering our children, then that is pretty non-negotiable. If you've seen a video where they use forceps to tear off the baby's arms and legs in order to remove them, then tear off the head, crush it, watch for white fluid to come out so that they know the skull has been crushed, and then reassemble all the parts to make sure that nothing was still left inside the womb, then it should be obvious that this practice has no place in a civilized society. All the sex and gore in shows like Spartacus or Game of Thrones are all considered to fit for primetime TV, but they won't show an abortion because it is considered to be too graphic. So it is perfectly understandable to me why people would be single-issue voters in regard to abortion, though it would be because abortion is so horrific, not because they are religious conservatives. And it is not like they think that the rest of the world can burn as long as abortion is made illegal.

A key characteristic of religious conservatives is that they cannot separate religion from politics. When everyone else can see where the line should be drawn, they can't.

All legislators make laws according to what they consider to be right and wrong, so it always about legislating morality regardless of whether it is religious or not.

The Pharisees in the New Testament are a bit different. To the Pharisees, Judaism was about rules. There are rules and commandments in the OT, and the function of Rabbis is to endlessly elaborate the rules. The restriction of "neighbor" to Jews is one case where Jesus did not agree with their summary of the OT law, or the way they applied it.

It is a fundamental misunderstanding of Judaism to think that it is about following rules rather than about having a relationship with God. In 1 John 5:3, it says that to love God is to keep His commands, in Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus summarized the Law as being about how to love God and our neighbor, and in John 14:23-24, Jesus said that if we love him, then we will obey his teachings, and his teachings are not his own, but that of the Father, so obedience to God has always been about showing our love for Him. In Matthew 23:23, Jesus said that faith is one of the weightier matters of the Law, and obedience to it is straightforwardly about having faith in God to guide us in how to rightly live, so Judaism is about growing in an intimate relationship with God based on love and faith. God has always disdained it when His people outwardly obeyed His commands while their hearts were far from Him because it is missing the whole point. There are many verses that describe the Mosaic Covenant as being a marriage between God and Israel, such as God describing Himself as her husband (Jeremiah 31:32) or with Israel's unfaithfulness being described as adultery, which eventually got so bad that God wrote the Northern Kingdom a certificate of divorce, and God can only become divorced if He has first be married (Jeremiah 3:8), so again since Adam walking with God in the Garden, it has always been about having an intimate relationship with God, with His commands just being instructions for how to grow in that relationship.

The function of the rabbis is not to endlessly elaborate on God's commands, but to teach God's commands, and the fact that the Pharisees were endlessly adding their own commands instead of teaching what God commanded was one of the major problems that Jesus had with them (Matthew 15:1-9). For example, the Pharisees were teaching to love our neighbor and hate our enemies, but nowhere did God command us to hate our enemies.

 

[Ron Gurley]

God's question: "Who is your "NEIGHBOR"?
God's answer: The entire world of Mankind must be shown LOVE and MERCY by a Christ-follower.

a. #1 = Love God + #2 = Love Neighbor AS SELF...the BIG TWO IN ORDER!...Luke 10: 25-29: Matthew 22: 37-40; Mark 12:30

 

[Douglas Hendrickson]

God's question: "Who is your "NEIGHBOR"?
God's answer: The entire world of Mankind must be shown LOVE and MERCY by a Christ-follower.

a. #1 = Love God + #2 = Love Neighbor AS SELF...the BIG TWO IN ORDER!...Luke 10: 25-29: Matthew 22: 37-40; Mark 12:30

I would think the "God's answer" should be found in the Bible. Where in the Bible do you find, "The entire world of Mankind must be shown LOVE and MERCY by a Christ-follower."? Love your enemies, yes, but not everyone is an enemy, I would think.

Certainly the Good Samaritan parable is nothing about "the entire world," or all mankind, except that the man in the ditch "could have been anyone."
There are those who even want to say, more or less, "It would NOT have been a Samaritan."
The Parable shows it was one in his neighborhood, one he happened to come by, who he was neighbor unto.
Not some "entire world" sort of imagining.

 

[Hieronymus]

Well, i think 'anybody' is quite the same as 'everybody' in this case.
Obviously one can not help everybody in need though, or show everybody Love.

 

[Douglas Hendrickson]

Well, i think 'anybody' is quite the same as 'everybody' in this case.
Obviously one can not help everybody in need though, or show everybody Love.

So your idea is not even feasible?

I point again to one point in the Parable - the neighbor is one nearby, one he happened to come by. NOT "anybody" OR "everybody."

"Anybody" he happens to come by certainly could not be "everybody"!

 

[Hieronymus]

So your idea is not even feasible?

I point again to one point in the Parable - the neighbor is one nearby, one he happened to come by. NOT "anybody" OR "everybody."

"Anybody" he happens to come by certainly could not be "everybody"!

My point is you should love everybody, but you can't show it to everybody, because you don't meet everybody.
Your fellow man is everybody, isn't it?

 

[RDKirk]

So your idea is not even feasible?

I point again to one point in the Parable - the neighbor is one nearby, one he happened to come by. NOT "anybody" OR "everybody."

"Anybody" he happens to come by certainly could not be "everybody"!

One of the factors made clear in the parable is that the Samaritan could not be "one nearby" the stricken Jew because he was a Samaritan. He lived in Samaria.

 

[Douglas Hendrickson]

My point is you should love everybody, but you can't show it to everybody, because you don't meet everybody.
Your fellow man is everybody, isn't it?

"Man" is a singular noun, meaning one.
A neighbor.

 

[Douglas Hendrickson]

One of the factors made clear in the parable is that the Samaritan could not be "one nearby" the stricken Jew because he was a Samaritan. He lived in Samaria.

IN THE PARABLE, he was what he was, and where he was.

In the neighborhood of the stricken Jew, a neighbor unto.

And he was where he was, NOT in Samaria.

edit: Or perhaps more precisely, he was where he could be neighbor unto the stricken one. In the Jesus sense of neighbor.

 

[Dale]

I would think the "God's answer" should be found in the Bible. Where in the Bible do you find, "The entire world of Mankind must be shown LOVE and MERCY by a Christ-follower."? Love your enemies, yes, but not everyone is an enemy, I would think.

Certainly the Good Samaritan parable is nothing about "the entire world," or all mankind, except that the man in the ditch "could have been anyone."
There are those who even want to say, more or less, "It would NOT have been a Samaritan."
The Parable shows it was one in his neighborhood, one he happened to come by, who he was neighbor unto.
Not some "entire world" sort of imagining.

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
--John 3:16 NIV


God loved "the world," meaning all the people in the world. Shouldn't we do likewise, to the extent that we are able?

 

[Douglas Hendrickson]

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
--John 3:16 NIV


God loved "the world," meaning all the people in the world. Shouldn't we do likewise, to the extent that we are able?

We cannot love in the same way as God is said to do in this beloved verse.

None of us have a Son to send to the world to offer himself as Savior of all who believe.
Never going to happen that we can do what God did as per John 3:16. IMPOSSIBLE.

That was God's love - that particular of God's love we can never duplicate.
We are never able to love in the way of John 3:16.

 

[Douglas Hendrickson]

Matthew 15:26 It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs.

So why did Jesus bother about the dog in the ditch?
Oh, it was not Jesus, it was the Samaritan.

And she implored him.
The woman, STRANGER who wanted her daughter healed.
Devil vexed daughter (the usual?)

DID JESUS REALLY call the poor lady a DOG?
(Any other questions?)

Why didn't Jesus recognize she was not really a dog earlier?
He would initially (WITH A MAN'S KNOWLEDGE) only know what his society has figured out up to that point.

What if it was meat?

What was it again about oh yes ONLY the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
TO VIOLATE THE KING JAMES (es?) ?

 

[Dale]

Matthew 15:26 It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs.

So why did Jesus bother about the dog in the ditch?
Oh, it was not Jesus, it was the Samaritan.

And she implored him.
The woman, STRANGER who wanted her daughter healed.
Devil vexed daughter (the usual?)

DID JESUS REALLY call the poor lady a DOG?
(Any other questions?)

Why didn't Jesus recognize she was not really a dog earlier?
He would initially (WITH A MAN'S KNOWLEDGE) only know what his society has figured out up to that point.

What if it was meat?

What was it again about oh yes ONLY the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
TO VIOLATE THE KING JAMES (es?) ?

Jesus tests her, then rewards her.

28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Matthew 15: 28 NIV

 

[Douglas Hendrickson]

Jesus tests her, then rewards her.

28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Matthew 15: 28 NIV

The to-the-pointedness of verse 27 is interesting.

And the view of "faith" here, said to be great - is that different from the usual?
She gives a perfect answer, and he calls it faith.

Something about TRUTH, the truthfulness and to-the-pointedness of her answer,
I would think? FAITH IS VISION, something like that? Intelligence?
How comfortable would anyone be with seeing FAITH AS INTELLIGENCE?