The Good Samaritan, a Warrior

- 2 minutes read - 353 words

I’m a little confused by Elisjsha Dicken being called a “Good Samaritan” e.g.: Pictured: Good Samaritan, 22, who killed Indiana mall gunman after he shot (yet another) would be mass-shooter in an American “soft-target” venue (here, a mall).

That parable, as recounted in the gospel of Luke was about, as I read it, a Samaritan finding a man who had been beaten and robbed by thieves who gave the victim comfort and aid (cash, a ride, an inn, wound dressings, etc.) with no expectation of remuneration.

The Samaritan did not happen upon the assault and execute the thieves. Jesus says, after relaying the parable, that its message is for those who would follow Him to truly love their neighbor as their own – regardless of tribal identity (Levite, Samaritan, etc.). It’s a bit of a perversion of Christianity that I read in the New Testament to revise the Good Samaritan into Batman (“Look, it’s the Sam-Signal! To the Sam-Donkey, Robin!”).

“Good Samaritans” give a young kid a lesson in tying ties so he nails an interview; they pick up stranded travelers; they give a haircut to the unhoused.

And sure, any sophist (or surly teenager) can pick up the theme of “protection” and the phrase “the best defense is a good offense” to re-cast Jesus’ parable of the sheep helping the sheep into a justification for the sheep to walk around like fluffy tanks.

But that doesn’t seem like the Christianity in the New Testament; it seems like something else, something darker, something I might call “militant Christianism:” a movement that seems to (re-)embrace the violence of the Wars of Reformation, the Crusades, and Christianity-suffused chattel-slave societies.

If many of my generation were pushed away from Christianity upon:

  • discovering priests were diddling children
  • discovering preachers were diddling secretaries
  • discovering churches were diddling the accounting,

finding it becoming the religion of glorying in violence while (ostensibly) being, in the texts, the religion peace, will be fatal. That perceptible hypocrisy will alienate and undermine the religion.

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” – Gandhi