When we picture ourselves as heroes, we often forget our humanity.
It seems to me that many of us read the parable of the Good Samaritan with an unstated understanding that its basic message is “For crying out loud, just don’t be a jerk.”
The Sunday school storyboard unfolds in our mind’s eye. A poor, innocent guy has been brutally beaten, and any reasonably moral person would be horrified. The priest and the Levite see him and pass by on the other side of the road. We are astonished by their callous behavior. Surely this is not what any decent human being would do! How can they bear to leave the poor man lying on the side of the road? We unimaginatively insert ourselves into the story in the role of the Good Samaritan, certain that if this event were ever to present itself in our daily lives, we would obviously do the right thing.
In my own experience, living this out went quite differently.
I am driving back to my home in the rural interior of the East African country of Burundi, where I live and work as a missionary physician. The past few days have been a marathon of high-stress cross-cultural and multilingual meetings regarding an international accreditation for our medical school. Preparing for my three-hour trip home, I am utterly spent. I want nothing more than to see my family and share the takeout food that is currently sitting on my passenger seat’s floorboard.
My car winds up the narrow mountain roads lined with banana and palm nut trees. This dangerous journey, with its steep drop-offs and limited visibility, was a terror for the first few years that I lived here, but now it is more or less commonplace. As I drive, I pray that the hours of the trip lighten a bit of the load that I’m feeling.
As the road turns yet again, I see a commotion in front …
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