You’ve probably heard someone refer to a helpful person as a “Good Samaritan,” and if you spent any time in Sunday School, with its flannel boards and puppets, you definitely heard the story about a Jewish man traveling along the road to Jericho, known for its danger and popularity with robbers. The man was ambushed by those robbers and left for dead, the parable goes, and two religious leaders passed by him but didn’t stop to help. The person who did stop to help was a Samaritan, a member of a group that was despised by the Jews. Not only did this Samaritan take the injured man to a nearby inn, knowing how the Jews felt about him and his people, but he also tended the man’s wounds and paid the innkeeper more than was due to ensure the man would have the care he needed to recover. The moral of the story, as I heard it in church, was that we were supposed to be helpers to those in need who appeared in our paths. While this is a nice and helpful admonition, it only skims the surface of the story.
Before he was attacked and beaten, the wounded man might tell us that he believed that the two religious leaders who walked on by would have stopped to help him. He probably believed that their religion advocated helping those in need, much like my Sunday School lessons. However, that’s not what his experience showed to be true. His experience showed that beliefs don’t always translate into right action at the right time, and this should give us pause when we wrestle with what we believe to be true. Author Barbara Brown Taylor suggests this:
“Maybe our lives are designed to upset our beliefs, not to reinforce them. Maybe it’s a better idea to let our lives teach us what to believe, instead of making our lives conform to our beliefs…Maybe the only belief any of us really needs is that compassion is the way of life.”
Rigidly holding to beliefs when experience shows them to be limited or even untrue isn’t helpful to anyone. And expecting life to conform to our beliefs can sometimes lead to disappointment in others and in ourselves. But holding love and compassion for ourselves and others as a constant offers a firm foundation to walk on. It gives even those who might be despised by culture a chance to be called “good,” and it provides those of us who are privileged a chance to rethink what we know about truth and goodness.