Jesus, whose birth Christians celebrate today, was once asked by a scholar of the Jewish law how to attain eternal life. The answer came from that same religious law: Love God with all your being; love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.
But Jesus was then pressed with a follow-up question: “Who is my neighbor?” He proceeded to tell what is probably the most famous parable in the entire Christian Bible — that of the Good Samaritan, now well known to Christians and non-Christians alike.
People think of the story as an exhortation to do good to strangers, and that it is. But it is also a story about religious tolerance. The hero is a Samaritan, a member of a people shunned by the Jews in that time for their heresy and alleged mixed ancestry. (The enmity was mutual; just before the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Gospel of Luke tells of a Samaritan town refusing to let Jesus enter because he was a Jew and was headed to Jerusalem.)
Jesus’ parable showed how this Samaritan, a racial and religious outcast, had been the only true neighbor to the man who had been robbed and left for dead on the road to Jericho. His own countrymen and coreligionists had been unwilling to help.
The obligation to love one’s neighbor extends beyond just one’s own little clan or nation or religious group or circle of friends. The fact that the Samaritan was the good neighbor implies a willingness to accept different people and respect their right to live according even to beliefs one does not share.
The Good Samaritan’s example in this regard is most clearly under assault today in the same region where it was first shared. Christians in the West should pray today for their coreligionists suffering under persecution by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and also for the Jews, Yazidi and Baha’i believers, and the many Muslims who equally face Islamic State terror.
It should also, of course, be remembered that intolerance is no more likely to stem from religious faith than from a lack of it. The secular totalitarian regimes of 20th century Europe were among history’s most violent persecutors.
Less violent, but nevertheless deeply intolerant, are many in America today who try to use the force of the state to oblige others to abandon their beliefs and conform to a secularist gospel. Bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services, for example, have only been partially thwarted in their attempt to impose their morality regarding abortion and contraception on Christians whose faith teaches them otherwise. To force others to choose between obeying the law and abandoning their religious beliefs is a form of religious persecution, even if it is not violent.
“If the world hates you,” Jesus once told his apostles, “realize that it hated me first.” The number of Christians in the world is still increasing but they face intensifying intolerance both here in the United States and elsewhere in the world from violent forces bent on their suppression or annihilation.
In this season, when the central Christian message of love is most clearly proclaimed, let everyone of goodwill remember the Good Samaritan and spare a thought for those vilified, suppressed and, in some cases, martyred for their faith.
