Am I My Brother’s Keeper?

This question serves as the prelude to the parable of the Good Samaritan in Christianity’s New Testament. Believing that it is so widely known in our culture relieves me of having to retell it here so that I might instead focus upon its meaning for our time. The mistake of interpreting the story literally is quite obvious in that hardly any of us traverse the road to Jericho with donkey in hand, and it will be an equally rare occurrence for most of us to find a beaten and robbed stranger at the side of the road. When we understand the parable figuratively, however, a rich lesson unfolds for us pertaining to the many and various excuses we can come up with to harden us against compassion toward suffering in all its forms. We don’t want to get our hands dirty. We don’t want to soil our reputation. We have more important things to do. It isn’t hard for me to rationalize that I have no responsibility for what is happening to others just as long as I am not the direct cause. Tragedies such as the Virginia Tech massacre will continue to occur for as long as we relieve ourselves of the responsibility for recognizing the inner torture of someone like Cho Seung-Hui, for as long as we are indifferent to what goes on in the families and communities from which such persons come. Until the whole of humankind is in harmonious relationship with its Creator, then, yes, we have the moral responsibility to love one another as we have been loved, and that means taking care of our brothers and sisters who are no longer strangers when seen as the children of God that they are.