The good samaritan--how good can you be?

So, I am still developing the discipline it takes to publish these posts weekly on the same day--I have the weekly part down, and I will keep working on the regularity of posting them on the same day each week.

For the last couple weeks I have been reading and re-reading the story of the good samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).  This story of a man being beaten, left for dead, ignored by the religious, and helped by his enemy is probably one of the most well known Bible stories of all time.  The samaritan's story is told time and time again to motivate us to do good works.  When I see someone broken down by the side of the road I need to stop and  help; when my elderly neighbor's sidewalk is covered in snow I need to get my wife to shovel it when she finishes with ours. You get the idea.  Only God knows how many millions of people have been helped because of this timeless story.

But I wonder if in spite of all the countless acts of kindness, we have missed the point of this story.  When I google, "what is the message of the good samaritan?" I get responses like, "do unto others as you would have done to you". But the story as we find it in the Bible opens with a lawyer asking Jesus this question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" and in response Jesus tells the story of the good samaritan.  This begs the question: Is behaving like the good samaritan the way to heaven?  I think the answer lies in the lawyer's original question--what must I do?  He comes to Jesus looking for something to do, and I think Jesus tells him a story of something the he knows the lawyer would never do--Jesus is illustrating that the "doing" path to God is an impossible one.

There is a little bit of the lawyer in me--I often come to Jesus looking for things to do.  I am naturally a doer, and I am always looking for the next assignment.  In my doer mentality I need to be reminded that there will always be something that I am unwilling to do.  I need to be reminded that the first step is not doing--the first step is believing.  Jesus tells me all I need to "do" in Mark 1:15, "repent and believe in the gospel."  If I can get the order down and believe first and do second, then the works of the gospel will flow out of me--not because of my effort, but because of the Spirit that is at work in me.

I hope the story of the good samaritan continues to motivate the people of the world to help each other.  But I also hope the story of the good samaritan wakes each of us up to our own inability to do enough--if the way of Jesus was about doing we would all fail.  Thankfully the way of Jesus is about believing, and that belief motivates us to do good works.  (James 2:14-26)