The other week, we covered the parable of the Good Samaritan in Bible Study. I’m sure this must be one of the best known parables, but if you want to read it, it is in Luke Chapter 10, verses 25 to 37. I have linked to that chapter in Bible Gateway which is a wonderful resource for looking up Bible texts and gives you a wide range of translations to choose from. The big insight for me was that it started with an expert in the Law asking Jesus “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”. Jesus responded “What is written in the Law?”. To which the man responded “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”. Jesus then said “Do this and you will live”.
The eye-opener for me was that Christianity condenses down to these two things. The Bible therefore ceases to be a “book of rules” as some non-Christians believe, but is a book through which we can get to know God and Jesus Christ better – knowledge of someone being a prerequisite of truly loving them.
The call to love our neighbour as ourselves is difficult, no one can deny. Jesus chose a Samaritan because of the long standing antipathy, hate almost, between Samaritans and Jews. The lesson is that the whole of humanity is our neighbour, including those who hate us, those who do us harm and those who do things we don’t like. But wouldn’t the world be a much better place if we all tried to do this, even if we don’t totally succeed? Imagine if all the hate whipped up by so many “activists” were turned into love for our fellow humans. Our social media are full of one group expressing hate and violence toward another. And if some object of hate is dead, they topple or deface his statue. Living people are cancelled amid a load of vitriol. What brought us to this? Is there a way back? I would like to see more people drawn to Christ, but even if non-Christians were to recognise that we need to replace hate by love, the world will improve. Something to pray about.
I will pray about replacing hate with love too.