Levite Be Gone: Releasing the Samaritan Within (Jason Miller)

by Jason Miller -- World News Trust

<30> In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. <31> A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. <32> So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. <33> But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. <34> He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. <35> The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

<36> “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

<37> The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

—Luke 10:25-37

In contrast to the seriousness of Christ’s message, consider a related irony that is comically absurd. Commonly referred to as the “U.S.,” our nation consists of grossly deformed social, political, economic, and cultural systems that indoctrinate us in the quasi-religion of “it’s all about me” while conditioning us to reflexively reject nearly all things related to the collective “US.”

Self-satisfied and narcissistic little careerists that many of us are, we remain oblivious to the immense suffering we are inflicting on the world as we gleefully pursue the American Dream, replete with the requisite Hummer, McMansion, trophy spouse, 2.5 “perfect” children, and all the trappings to which our American Exceptionalism entitles us at the expense of billions of other humans, hundreds of billions of non-human animals, and Mother Earth herself.

Sure, many of us hear Jesus’s parable and think of ourselves as the Good Samaritans. After all, our humanitarian imperialism has made the world safe for freemarket-dom and corporatocracy for years. And those “ignorant savages” whom we have “rescued” by bringing them the “stability” of ruthless dictatorships and showing them how to put their resources we exploit to good use damn well better be thankful we bestowed our “compassion” upon them. So in a very perverse sense, we are Samaritans when it comes to our foreign policy because we often involve ourselves in the affairs of others, but no argument based on a shred of intellectual honesty would support us being “Good.”

Generally speaking, we have much more in common with the Levite than the Good Samaritan. From the moment the doctor retrieved us from the birth canal and severed the umbilical cord that nurtured us for nine months, our sponge-like minds began absorbing the idiocies of the distinctly “American” myth of rugged, hyper-individualism. We devote such exhaustive levels of emotional and mental energy to aping the ridiculous archetypes personified by the likes of “go it alone hard asses” such as John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis that our capacity to experience empathy, compassion, and deep connections with human and non-human animals is severely stunted.

How beguiled are we with a cultural dogma that elevates the individual to the level of a deity and portrays collectivism as a plague of Biblical proportions?

Let’s examine some of the contradictions and distortions to which many of us are blind.

more

http://www.worldnewstrust.com/commentary/levite-be-gone-releasing-the-samaritan-within-jason-miller.html

edit: fixing punctuation

"Christian" (so our government and churches are increasingly tell us as islamophobia is stoked ever further up) acts in a "Good Samaritan" situation, you might read this story:

Removed patient in care struggle

A terminally-ill Ghanaian woman who was forced to return home after her UK visa expired is struggling to receive the medical treatment she needs.
Ama Sumani, 39, who has cancer and requires kidney dialysis, was removed from a Cardiff hospital and flown back to her home country on Wednesday.

But she says she is unable to get care because she cannot pay hospital fees...


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7182467.stm

This follows up another story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7178416.stm

(Among another things it reveals that five immigration officers were despatched to remove the woman from her hospital bed.)


Our government is of course trying to prove how "tough" (not a Christian quality, I would have thought) it is with illegal immigrants trying to get treatment from the NHS. The story will, I fear, provoke little sympathy. The Great British Public thinks the government is far too lenient with illegal immigrants and grudges every penny of their tax money which isn't spent on themselves.

Perhaps they would do better if they were Samaritans, not Christians.

against plenty of competition.

If I were a Christian and a member of the government, I'd be pretty worried about that bit in the Bible where Jesus condemns those who did not do it 'unto the least of these' - 'I was a stranger and you took me not in.. I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me.... depart, ye cursed...' Actually if I were just a human being and a member of the government I'd be seriously worried about the evil here!

And one of the central points of the 'Good Samaritan' story is that it's a member of an ethnic and religious minority who does the right thing, where the officially 'upstanding citizens' don't. It's interesting that *this* is the part of the story that tends not to be emphasized nowadays.