“A conventional reading of the parable (of the Good Samaritan) understands it as a condemnation of religious hypocrisy, instead of following their religions code of compassion, the Priest and the Levite take a wide swerve past the man who had fallen among thieves.
In fact, this little story is not about the dangers of insincere religion it is about the dangers of sincere religion.It is not about religious hypocrisy, it is about religious fidelity.
That is the kick in the story, the surprise. The Priest and the Levite followed their religious code to the letter, a code that forbade them to touch foreigners or dead bodies and the naked man by the roadside was probably both.
Their heart prompted compassion, their religion prompted caution and they followed their religion.
But in the Samaritan bound by the same code, compassion overcomes the strictures of his religion, and he goes to the aid of the dangerous stranger.
The story encapsulates Jesus’ attitude to the dangers we are in when we allow our moral code and religious traditions to assume absolute authority over us.We need moral and religious systems to protect us from the chaos of our passions but if we give them absolute authority they become a greater danger to us than the unfettered passions they are supposed to curb. By this parable and by his dismissive attitude to the rigidities of law and custom, Jesus rendered every code provisional and discardable when confronted with real human need.
The meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan was that compassion was a powerful dissolvent of inherited prejudices.”
Leaving Alexandria – A memoir of faith and doubt by Richard Holloway.
What do you think of Richard Holloway’s reading of the text?
Can you think of a modern application?
Wheat & Tares 
This parable is a response to the question, “Who is my neighbor” (Love God, Love your neighbor).
Here the neighbor who is to be loved is the Samaritan, the one racial group the Jews hated the most. Therefore, it becomes clear we are to love our enemies and overcome our prejudices.
Stephen, I like that reading a lot, and given that it’s June, the reference to supporting our LGBTQ siblings seems pretty obvious. Where things get messy is what it might mean to play the role of Samaritan in tending to those spiritual wounds. One person might believe their interventions to be Samaritan-like while the patient wishes that they would leave off and join the priest and Levite in passing on by.
I saw the phrase “we need a moral and religious systems to protect us…”. No, we really don’t. We don’t need a religious system at all to protect us.
Exactly this! We get so caught up in the letter of the law that we forget the spirit.
As far as an example let me give you my favourite. It is embodied in the story of Laban in the BofM. Just before Nephi sends Laban into the next life the final nail in Laban’s coffin was when the spirit tells Nephi that, “It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.” which is a terrible idea. It was this idea that was behind the Lafferty brothers killing of Brenda and her baby. The strength of the idea was so strong that they actually used it in their defence. Let me let you in on a little secret. This defence will never work. Yet members of Church read this story and pass over it without giving it a thought every time they read the BofM. In doing this they are just like the Priest and the Levite. Not only does this make my head ache it also hurts my heart.
I see the parable as a choice between compassion and purity. The Jews were unclean if they touched a dead body. That is a purity law. It has nothing to do with loving your neighbor or your enemy. The Priest and Levite might have been on the way to the temple and it they risked being unclean, it would ruin their chance to go to the temple. They would make it to Jerusalem and be unclean and unable to serve in the temple. They would blow what might be a once in a lifetime chance. Those hearing the story knew what the Levite of priest would be giving up by being unclean.
Like I heard about the climbers on Mt Everest that if another hiker from another party is in distress, they just leave them to die because the investment in getting to Everest is so expensive that they refuse to miss their chance of making it to the top for a stranger.
Jesus is saying that compassion or love is the higher law, above being pure or “clean”.
How can we apply that in our lives? Well, most of the Mormon obsession with sex is about purity. Things like no oral sex, the obsession for teen boys and masturbation, no sex outside of marriage, even gay sex , are all considered to be against the purity laws. The idea that a missionary is better off dead than coming home having lost his “honor”, or that a rape victim needs to fight to the death to save her virtue that is about purity, not love of the person involved. If you really love your daughter, wouldn’t you rather she survive the rape? If you love your son, why on earth would you rather have him come home in a coffin than come home after an embarrassing affair with a girl? The absolute obsession that some Mormons have with sexual purity is not at all about loving your neighbor as yourself and loving God. It is all about purity.
I’d like to use this in a future lesson. Does anyone have a citation to the verse that talks about not touching foreigners?
Josh. The original is talking about how we need systems or religion or morals but how “ if we give them absolute authority they become a greater danger to us than the unfettered passions they are supposed to curb.”
I think you would agree with that.
This is why I dislike Pres. Nelson’s oft-repeated “covenant path” language. The priest and the Levite in the parable were each strictly adhering to the “covenant path” by ignoring the injured man on the road. Nelson’s version is especially noxious because, unlike Jesus, he doesn’t seem to make any allowance for the higher law (in this case, “love thy neighbor”) to override the commandments he considers most important (e.g. the full name of the Church, taking the sacrament right-handed, etc.).
Not a Cougar: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Avoiding-Foreigners
Eg
“Acts 10:28
Verse Concepts
And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean
Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Avoiding-Foreigners”
-Not a Cougar
Try Leviticus 5, Numbers 19, or Leviticus 11. They all point to the concept of touching unclean people or things can make one unclean.
What Anna said times a thousand. The parable illustrates the false belief that devotion to an abstract (and arbitrary) ideal in order to ensure one’s place in the world to come is preferable to actions of loving care in this world. Anna make a great point about the bizarre and harmful Mormon obsession with sexual “purity” being another example of what we encounter in the parable. I’ve often wondered if the parable is really not so much about fear of breaking a “rule” and more about fear of the extra labor it takes to care for someone. Clearly, the narrative refers, even if obliquely, to Christ’s condemnation of those who draw near to him with the lips but their hearts are far from them. It’s easy to give lip service to ethical or moral principles and it’s also relatively easy to superficially and publicly demonstrate one’s adherence to a rule or set of rules; it requires another level of investment, faith, and compassion to actually stop and care for someone. That’s what the parable is trying to tell us, I think. It forces us to reflect on our own tendencies and to confront our shortcomings when it comes to demonstrating compassion. And as Anna’s example demonstrates, there is also real, measurable harm that’s done when we zealously cleave to the letter of the law rather than letting compassion and charity guide us.
Jesus often reached out to those deemed unclean, unworthy etc. And, He commanded us to judge not.
Too often it seems the opposite in the COJCLDS. But that’s what you get when, rather than focusing on the Gospel, the energy is on promoting/paying homage to the church and its leaders.
Anna:“ Like I heard about the climbers on Mt Everest that if another hiker from another party is in distress, they just leave them to die because the investment in getting to Everest is so expensive that they refuse to miss their chance of making it to the top for a stranger.”
I don’t know your source for that claim.
The fact is, it is a very dangerous venture to attempt a rescue. It is life or death just to get yourself down alive.
Lois, I have no idea on where I read that, but there were two reasons one being the fishing everything they had invested and the other part of it was exactly the cost of not only not making it to the top, after you have spent so much just getting there and will never in your life get another chance, but the additional danger of trying to help someone. If you share you oxygen, you might run out, and it is impossible to carry someone. It was a story of someone who had hiked and was horrified at themselves because they didn’t stop because it would be their only chance in a lifetime and it just wasn’t worth risking their own life, so on their way up, they went passed someone out of oxygen, as did all the other hikers.
Anna:
I did a quick search—It might be David Sharp. He was just 1000 ft below the summit—really, an impossible place to rescue someone. Someone did stop and give him a bottle of oxygen. But it just wasn’t going to be enough.
Those who climb Everest know the risks—and that it might become their final resting place.
“ Sharp’s mother, Linda, did not blame Brice, Chaya or anyone else for her son’s death. She thanked them for what they did do.
“Your only responsibility,” she said, “is to save yourself — not to try to save anyone else.”
My brother-in-law attempted summiting Everest twice. The first time he was at the camp above base camp when an earthquake struck. That trek was aborted. The second time he was successful. But I will never forget how he described feeling at one point he couldn’t feel his hands and thought he was going to die—and the only thing that kept him going was trying to make it back for his family.
I just want to applaud this line from Brother Sky:
“What Anna said times a thousand. The parable illustrates the false belief that devotion to an abstract (and arbitrary) ideal in order to ensure one’s place in the world to come is preferable to actions of loving care in this world.”
We’re taught to have eternal perspective, and to not trade what you want most for what you want at the moment. That means we’re to make all of our decisions based on what will bring us the most blessings in the NEXT life. That tunnel vision causes us to miss out on what matters the most right now, right here.
A thought about the laws of purity and compassion. We often consider these laws to be equal in importance yet opposite in pull…a gospel yin and yang.
But…the more helpful perspective is that of the lower and higher laws. Purity is the lower law. Compassion is the higher law.
This is insight: we can EVENTUALLY be made PURE through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, intermediately during our mortal lives and in totality and finality after the resurrection.
One will not and indeed CANNOT be made COMPASSIONATE through the Atonement of Christ. He cannot simply decree that our entire character be change. If we are ever to obey this higher law and develope this character of Christ, we must do it NOW, act by act and kindness by kindness.
To return to our Heavenly Parents, we must become pure EVENTUALLY. To return to our Heavenly Parents, we must become compassionate NOW.
I get that an external performance-based religion would discuss this parable from that point of view, eg religious conformity, purity, scrupulosity, etc. However, Rich Brown is the only one who IMHO gets it. When Jesus said that the entire “law” was contained in the the two great commandments, he was repeating traditional Jewish theological thought back to them so they couldn’t get their gotcha moment. Then they ask him “who is my neighbor?” His story explains that it’s everyone: the foreigner, the immigrant, the ill and suffering, the drag queen, the transgender child, your political opponents, atheists, heretics, all are your neighbors. Consanguinity, affiliations, memberships, distance, are meaningless and subsumed into the category neighbor.
Good comment, but as per usual the proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof. The gospel of Jesus Christ is quite simple, but very difficult to observe because it forever challenges us to higher standards of worship, behaviour, and conduct. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be the gospel.
Jade
Your comment is incredibly insightful. Thank you