On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered: ” ‘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 neighbor as yourself.’”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
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. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. So he hurried immediately to Jericho where he and a group of friends petitioned the city council to create the Good Samaritan Rescue Foundation. The council responded that they didn’t have enough funds to pay for the Foundation and turned the man and his friends away. But rather than leave, they staged a sit-in where they took over the offices of the council.
“After several weeks, the council relented and passed a bill authorizing the creation of the Good Samaritan Rescue Foundation — with the funding for the Foundation to be determined later. The man and his non-governmental organization (Friends of the GSRF) started lobbying for the city council to raise taxes on the people of Jericho in order to properly fund the GSRF. After council elections the following year, they replaced the existing council members with ‘more compassionate and loving’ candidates who immediately raised the taxes on the local population from 10% to 25%.
“Funding now secured, the Samaritan applied for post of executive director and easily won the job. After hiring his friends, his first act was to appoint a task force to examine the needs of Jews traveling the highway from Jerusalem to Jericho. The task force met for several weeks at a local resort and determined that part of the problem was that the robbers were beating up the travelers because the robbers were scared of retaliation. Travelers had taken to carrying clubs as they traveled the road and the robbers were acting out of fear. And they were robbing because it was embedded into part of their culture.
“The council soon passed the ‘Jericho Highway Safety Act’ which banned private citizens from carrying clubs. They also appointed another task force to examine why the robbers hated the Jews and Samaritans so much and how to solve the problem in multi-cultural, diverse way. In order to pay for these two new mandates, the taxes were raised from 25% to 35%.
“Several years passed as the ranks of the GSRF swelled with more and more paid members. They soon formed a union, demanding council-provided health care and three-weeks of paid leave. The council, convinced that this was only the right thing to do, authorized these requested and raised the taxes from 35% to 50%.
“Unbeknownst to all of them, the man on the road had died several years earlier from his wounds.
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law replied, “None of them.”
Jesus told him, “Exactly. Robbing others in order to enrich yourself in the name of helping others is not helping others.
“In fact, robbing others in order to really help others is not a neighborly act either. The person who was robbed was not allowed to perform a moral act of kindness. His money was taken from him without his consent. And the person robbing the first in order to take care of the second is not performing a moral act. The money was not his to give.
“While those in need might appreciate it, the gift is tainted. These tainted gifts will eventually lead them to think that foolish acts will not bear consequences.”
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