Abstract
The so-called ‘Parable of the Good Samaritan’ is one of the most famous and most-loved of all of the parables told by Jesus, but I’m not sure it’s rightly named. In the Parable itself, the Samaritan isn’t called ‘good,’ and later in his ministry Jesus will shun even being called ‘good’ himself, saying that, ‘no one is good except God alone’. So perhaps we should be wary of calling the Samaritan ‘good.’ He is described as being ‘moved with pity’ and as ‘the one who showed mercy,’ so perhaps we should refer to ‘the Parable of the Merciful Samaritan’ instead of the ‘Parable of the Good Samaritan.’
For the Samaritan is indeed merciful to the stripped, beaten, and half-dead traveller, and so proves to be a neighbour to him. And, since Jesus’ point to the lawyer is that he should similarly be a neighbour to those in need, by showing mercy to them, the Parable has been seen both as an encouragement to Christians to care for those in need and as a model for how to be merciful.
But we must be careful! For I am convinced that, while the call to see those who have needs as our neighbours to whom we must show mercy is correct, to assume that the Merciful Samaritan offers us the universal example of how to do that in all circumstances is deeply flawed.
The victim in the parable was clearly absolutely in extremis. Having been attacked, beaten, and left half-dead, he was utterly incapable of taking any steps to look after himself, even with the help of others. He was entirely dependent on someone else taking responsibility for his plight and rescuing him—which is what the Samaritan did, of course.
And there are those today whose capacity to help themselves, even with assistance, is extremely limited indeed. I do quite a lot of work with people with dementia, and my father also lives with dementia, so I am keenly aware that those whose dementia has reached a severe stage have a hugely reduced capacity to care for themselves or to make decisions about their lives, such that they become almost totally reliant on others.
When seeking to show mercy to people in such extreme situations, it is not wrong to care for them by effectively making all the decisions for them. It is not wrong to set up activities for people with severe dementia, rather than work with them on establishing things that they want to do. For they are not capable of making those decisions or of carrying them out. And so it is that, in conjunction with Crossreach, the Church of Scotland’s Social Care Agency, I am in the process of setting up a creative painting project for people with dementia, as an act of mercy and of neighbourliness.
But if a person or a group of people are capable of taking some responsibility for themselves, we are not loving them as our neighbours if we just decide what they need and do it for or, worse, to them. We are just disempowering them and being patronising towards them. There is a world of difference between saying, ‘How can I help you?’ and saying, ‘What can I do for you?’! The loving, merciful, neighbourly way is, wherever possible, to work with and help the ‘needy’, not just to do things for or to them.
I also work with a group of people who are in recovery from drug or alcohol addiction. In many ways, this ‘working with’ is actually harder than ‘doing things for’ people, for I have to be careful all the time that I don’t overstep the mark and slip into doing things off my own bat, because it’s easier, quicker, and involves less discussion and negotiation to get things done. But while this may be easier and quicker for me, it demeans them, devalues them, and disempowers them. And that is not being a neighbour to them, nor being merciful to them. May God forgive me for those occasions when I do slip into a ‘do it for them’ mindset! I have to remember what is called the ‘Iron Rule’—‘do not do for others what they can and should do for themselves’.
Nor is it being a neighbour and merciful to those ‘in need’ if we silently acquiesce in the injustice that causes them to be ‘in need’ in the first place, just because their need gives us an opportunity to help them. I have in mind here the phenomenal rise of foodbanks in our country in the past few years, offering emergency food parcels to those in our society who find themselves without sufficient resources to buy enough to eat.
Many foodbanks are established and run by Christians, and many congregations have a box at the back of Church for donations of foodstuffs for the local foodbank. And many Christians have seen this as a real way in which they can love their neighbours who are in need.
And, of course, it is. And I help with a local foodbank on a regular basis. But in order to love our neighbours in our local community who are in need of food, it is not enough just to put a tin in the box each Sunday, or even to go and help with the preparation and distribution of the parcels. We have also to protest—with those who are on the receiving end of it all—against the injustice in our society that means that there are so many people in 21st-century Britain whose incomes are so low or whose Benefits have been brutally sanctioned that every County of our land has to have at least one foodbank. For surely the existence of foodbanks is a sign that something is wrong with our country? And that needs to be changed. We need to be among those who protest at the necessity of foodbanks, as part of our loving our neighbours as ourselves.
I am also part of the emerging ‘Beyond Foodbanks’ movement in Scotland, which is indeed seeking to change the ‘unjust structures of society’ so that foodbanks are no longer needed in our land. A small start on that would be to get rid of the name ‘foodbank’, which sounds quite respectable and mainstream, like the financial banks. Surely we need to recover a clearer awareness that the need for food is a crisis and an emergency, not something to be tolerated and valued, and to reflect that in what we call the places that provide such crisis help?
The value of the Parable of the Merciful Samaritan lies in its reminder to us that we are to love our neighbours as ourselves (as well as loving the Lord our God), and that our neighbour is whoever is ‘in need.’ But the way it describes the Samaritan having mercy on the victim of vicious violence should not deceive us into thinking that that is the only, or even the primary, way in which we can and should show that love and mercy to those who are ‘in need’. In some cases, that one-way mode of caring is indeed quite right and proper, if those in need are quite incapable of doing anything for themselves, but in many others, that form of caring can actually be unloving, if it deskills and disempowers those we’re seeking to have mercy on. In those cases, a being alongside, working with, helping, rather than ‘doing for’ approach, is the way of love. And, in some cases, the way of loving our neighbour is not simply to meet their need, but with them to campaign for and to work for change in our society so that that need is removed for good.
The skill is learning which way of having mercy is the right one in any particular circumstance, and then to have the courage and the discernment to love in that way, and so ‘fulfil the law of Christ’.