Category Archives: Politics and Society

Season Two of Change Agent

Season two of my wife Carey’s podcast, Change Agent, is now live. She continues her interviews with social entrepreneurs in the field of family violence prevention and advocacy, such as the law school lecturer who wrote the first textbook on family violence law in America.

You can listen to the first episode of the second season, an interview with Cheri Allison, the executive director of the Alameda County Family Justice Center. Allison wants to move the work from crisis services to helping the people she serves truly flourish.

In the future, you can stream the podcast on her website or on Soundcloud. You can also subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher. New episodes will be available weekly. Please leave some comments and reviews to help get the word out.

Rereading the Parable of the Good Samaritan

This article first appeared at Evangelicals for Social Action.

Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan is a brilliant gut-punch. At least, it was to its original audience. It could be a gut-punch for us again, if we can set aside our familiarity with the story.

We know some of the parable’s influence in our collective imagination. We name hospitals and classify laws in honor of the story’s protagonist, testaments to the story’s enduring nature. Unfortunately, that very popularity may inhibit our ability to allow the tale to challenge us. We’ve heard it so many times we no longer see the scandal in it. In this case, familiarity doesn’t breed contempt, but indifference.

Throughout history, interpreters have read the Parable of the Good Samaritan as an exhortation to limitless compassion. This valid analysis continues to push us to greater and broader love, but such a reading alone does not appreciate the full challenge Jesus presents us in the story. He also confronts our presumptions of who God can use. Jesus shows us that anyone is capable of exhibiting neighborly love. Jesus’ original audience would have seen the story’s hero, the Samaritan, as sub-human or as an enemy. Yet it is the Samaritan alone who extends God-like compassion, and acts as a neighbor to the hurting man. The reprobate, the sinner, the enemy; that is, one of “those people,” becomes a conduit of God’s mercy in this world.

Jesus displays his storytelling genius in the details he gives. With a little translating, these details ensure this story will remain provocative no matter the context of the audience. To begin, it’s worth reading the story again. I recommend going slowly.

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:25–37, NRSV)

The historical background of this parable is generally well-known. The Jewish people of Jesus’ day looked with disdain upon Samaritans, whom they considered heretics and half-breeds, the products of remnant Israelites commingling with Assyrian invaders centuries earlier. (It should be noted, Samaritans similarly despised the Jews.) To Jesus’ original audience, a Samaritan was the absolute “other,” against whom any smear could be said because everyone just knew it was true.

In casting a Samaritan as the hero of this story and portraying the priest and the Levite critically, Jesus is guaranteed to offend those listening to the story, especially folks like the legal expert who originally questioned Jesus. Jesus deftly upends his audience’s prejudices, in order to evoke a response. To the legal expert’s credit, his biases and shock don’t keep him from understanding Jesus’ point.

Let’s place ourselves in the role of that lawyer. He essentially asks, “Whom am I required to love, and whom am I not required to love?” As humans, we tend to shrink our circles of welcome, and then make those boundaries impermeable. We want to love only people we perceive as being like us. The lawyer’s question is often our question. Are we required to love people of other ethnicities, nationalities, or religions? Are we required to love people who cannot reciprocate, or who might squander our charity? Are we required to love people whose words and actions we find repugnant? Are we required to love people of other political parties? Are we required to love people who want to harm us?

The Samaritan can probably discern the beaten man on the roadside is Jewish. He would be safe in assuming the victim likely views Samaritans poorly. Yet he helps anyway. Therefore, we see the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” and after reading the parable, we see that the answer is, “Everyone!” Unsurprisingly, this parable is often used to illustrate how we are to help our fellow humans, no matter where they live or how they suffer. Our neighbor is every person, not merely someone who shares our ethnicity, nationality, religion, or other affinities. This sort of reading has motivated many excellent acts of compassion throughout history, and we still need to hear this message.

We could arrive at a similar interpretation, though—that everyone is our neighbor—even if the roles were reversed and the hero were an average Jewish person who crossed the social barriers of his day to help a victimized Samaritan. Jesus’ original audience does not come to a mawkish change of heart regarding the Samaritan’s humanity. The love Jesus describes is more than a disposition or a perspective. In this parable, Jesus shows us that the Samaritan loves by acting to the point of accepting the cost of that love.

Making the Samaritan the hero is not an incidental detail—it is central to understanding the scandal and the power of the parable. Jesus challenges his audience to see that the presumed reprobate has the capacity for God-like altruism. In fact, he is the only person in the story who extends it. The Samaritan does what we would expect of a person who keeps the Torah’s teachings. If we were to draw a picture of a citizen of God’s kingdom, we would probably come up with someone a lot like the Good Samaritan. In answer to the lawyer’s original question, Jesus shows the Samaritan, the dehumanized other, is capable of inheriting eternal life. The Samaritan becomes an agent of God.

Jesus pushes the audience by flipping the lawyer’s self-justifying question back on him. After the parable, Jesus asks his own question: “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He presents readers with the same challenge. “Who is my neighbor?” becomes a question we ought never ask. Instead, we should examine ourselves with the question, “Am I being a neighbor to others?” Jesus eliminates any definition of “neighbor” that has anything to do with shared attributes. “Neighbor” is now a moral designation to which we aspire—we hope we can be neighbors to others. And becoming a neighbor is contingent upon our showing mercy in tangible ways. Remember, Jesus’ conclusion is not, “Now think differently;” his exhortation is, “Go and do likewise.”

“Who is my neighbor?” becomes a question we ought never ask. Instead, we should examine ourselves with the question, “Am I being a neighbor to others?”

Perhaps the most brilliant aspect of the parable is just how eminently translatable it is in any cultural context. For those of us living in America today, we have to peel away the layers of our cultural familiarity to recapture how a Samaritan hero would be controversial to Jesus’ audience. This parable has become so well-known that in our context the term Samaritan is now synonymous with a charitable person. To call someone a Samaritan today is a compliment of a high order.

Merely change the characters to modern equivalents and the power of the parable immediately returns. Cast in the role of the Samaritan a person you could never imagine being a part of your faith community. Make them someone from a people group who scares or angers you, a group whom you cannot envision God ever using to establish justice and mercy. Then change the Levite and priest to respected members of your community.

After the attacks on 9/11, I heard preachers tell the Parable of the Good Taliban Fighter, or the Parable of the Good Muslim. Thanks to our propensity to tighten the circle of people we think God should love and use, the possibilities for new Samaritans are nearly endless.

The Parable of the Good Gang Member. The Parable of the Good Atheist. The Parable of the Good Religious Right Christian. The Parable of the Good Progressive Christian. The Parable of the Good Syrian Refugee. The Parable of the Good Drug Addict. The Parable of the Good Oil Tycoon. The Parable of the Good Traditional Marriage Proponent. The Parable of the Good Homeless Man. The Parable of the Good NRA Member. The Parable of the Good Transgendered Woman. The Parable of the Good Black Lives Matter Activist. The Parable of the Good Communist. The Parable of the Good Capitalist. The Parable of the Good Environmentalist. The Parable of the Good Blue Lives Matter Advocate. The Parable of the Good Undocumented Immigrant. The Parable of the Good Hillary Clinton Voter. The Parable of the Good Donald Trump Supporter.

However you recast the roles of the parable, just be sure the new players make you feel uncomfortable. Then you’ll know you’re on the right track.

Trump Exploits Institutional Distrust

In his letter terminating former FBI director James Comey, President Donald Trump states, “It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission.” His hope to restore trust in the FBI is laudable. Unfortunately, Trump’s own words and actions undermine his stated intention. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he called the FBI “corrupt” numerous times, and alleged “collusion” between the FBI, Department of Justice, and State Department. Firing the FBI director overseeing an investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election, including possible ties with Trump’s campaign, does not engender trust that the new director will be independent of the president. Trump has not sought to heal the suspicion Americans have toward our institutions — he foments and exploits distrust as a means of garnering support for himself.

On NPR’s Morning Edition, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice argued institutions are vital for a healthy democracy and lamented the current prevailing distrust of institutions in the United States:

I worry a great deal about all of those surveys that are out that Americans, in particular, are becoming distrustful of our institutions — that Americans are beginning to say they’re either irrelevant or they’re corrupt or they certainly don’t speak to me. But the institutions are actually still functioning.

The American populace has quantifiably low confidence in our national institutions, whether public or private. This distrust is often warranted. Politicians more interested in partisan victories than the common good, churches protecting clergy who commit atrocities, corporations seeking profits over the well-being of people, news media more interested in flash and novelty than in nuance and context, all erode trust.

Gallup, June, 2016

In such environments, healthy skepticism is bound to calcify into impenetrable cynicism. We abandon the shared goal of making institutions worthy of our trust. Instead we retreat into our echo chambers, listening, for example, only to news sources that confirm our views.

Trump has not directed his attacks solely at the FBI, but to other institutions as well. He claimed the Senate’s rules constitute an “archaic system,” that is, “really a bad thing for the country.” During the campaign he questioned the impartiality of a federal judge and since becoming president, he has continued to undermine the judiciary’s reputation, particularly when judges offer rulings he doesn’t like.

Trump may say he wants to restore institutional trustworthiness, but he seems to think trustworthiness would only come if those institutions show loyalty to him. He does not praise the virtue of a free press as his predecessors did, he dismisses stories he doesn’t like as “Fake news,” and calls the press, “the enemy of the American people.” In discussing the FBI, Trump has never called for a bureau or director independent of political pressures. He instead bashed the FBI when it announced it was recommending no charges against his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and praised the FBI when it announced it was re-opening the investigation into her e-mails. That is, Trump measures an institution’s trustworthiness by how much that institution benefits him.

Throughout the 2016 campaign Trump boasted he was the only person who could solve our nation’s problems. On a range of topics — e.g., caring for veterans, trade, fighting ISIS, appreciating the Bible — Trump regularly claimed nobody was better than he was. Most notably during his speech at the Republican National Convention, he said of the political arena, despite never holding political office, “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” We might dismiss these statements as a salesman’s braggadocio. But the effect of these words from the president of the United States is far more damaging.

Trump isn’t merely displaying enormous hubris in his boasts of knowing more than anyone else. These boasts are part of a larger and cynical divide-and-conquer strategy. First, Trump exacerbates the vacuum of institutional distrust. Then he attempts to step into the vacuum and become the sole object of our trust. The president aims for a cult of personality. In essence, he argues, “You don’t trust these institutions, and for good reason. You should put your trust in me because I know better than anyone else.” The irony of all this is Trump’s historically low approval ratings at this point in a presidency show he is not engendering the trust he seeks. In fact it is becoming more likely he will do more to damage to American trust in the institution of the presidency.

This brings us back to Secretary Rice. In the same interview mentioned above, she praised the wisdom of the American founders to form institutions that would curb the excesses of human folly. She reminds us we are not built to be a nation that revolves around a singular person, no matter how big their personality.

No country can rely on just a single personality to carry it forward. And so what the American Founding Fathers understood was that institutions were built for human imperfection, not human perfection. And so for instance, they constrained the executive by embedding it in a balance with other institutions, a very powerful legislature.

They also gave us courts, independent jurists. They left room for civil society, which meant that citizens could directly associate in order to bring pressure on their governments. And they gave us a free press. They understood that you might have in the presidency someone who wanted to arrogate power into themselves. And they believed that was dangerous, having just experienced King George. And so they built a balanced system.

The work of restoring trust in our institutions will be long and take many shapes as the problems leading to our suspicion is unique to each case — it will look different to engender confidence again in the medical system than in Congress. But this is urgent and necessary work. We should push our institutions and the people who lead them to earn back our trust. We should also reject attempts by the president to exploit our distrust of institutions for his own gain.

Change Agent Podcast, First Episode

The first episode of Change Agent, a new podcast hosted by Carey Watson, MD is now available. This week she interviews Dr. Brigid McCaw about the creation and evolution of Kaiser Permanente’s innovative Family Violence Prevention Program. I’m very excited for this podcast and am really proud of Carey’s hard work putting this together.

You can listen above to the episode. You can stream the podcast on her website or on Soundcloud. You can also subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher. New episodes will be available weekly on Wednesday. Please leave some comments and reviews to help get the word out.

Announcing the Change Agent Podcast

I’m excited to announce a new podcast, Change Agent, hosted by Carey Watson, MD. (Carey is not only my favorite gynecologist, she’s also my wife.) Each week she interviews social entrepreneurs in the field of family violence prevention and advocacy. These leaders are creating new ways to bring wholeness and justice to families in the San Francisco Bay Area.

You can listen above to the first season’s introduction. In the future, you can stream the podcast on her website or on Soundcloud. You can also subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher. New episodes will be available weekly on Wednesday. Please leave some comments and reviews to help get the word out.