Reveal: The
Good Samaritan
Scandal
salvationarmy.org.nz/socialpolicy
How ‘getting off a donkey’ changed what we thought we knew | A publication from the Social Policy Unit
By Malcolm Irwin
A Confession
I can no longer claim ignorance. I can no longer say:
‘I didn’t know’.
Every day I drink coffee, work on a laptop and dress in
clothes that I know someone, somewhere has endured
inhumane conditions to make. I soak the dishes in
chemicals that pollute the environment. I fill the car with
petrol, a disappearing and non-renewable resource. I enjoy
food that I know is not within the reach of millions of
people. My children play with toys that I know other kids
have laboured long hours, in slave-like circumstances, to
produce. And I know that there is more to life than what I
own, but I still find myself inside cyberspace or in front of
the TV, salivating over whatever is newer or whoever is nicer.
It is increasingly difficult to deny that I’m part of a
death-dealing global system. I am complicit in the power
structures and injustices that cause suffering, poverty
and even death. As Thomas M. Beaudoin (2001), says
evocatively, everyone, everywhere is ‘living after purity’.
On good days, I try to make changes that I hope will make
a difference, both to me and to others. I sponsor a child, go
to church, give my pre-loved clothes to the Family Store,
grow my own parsley, grapefruit and tomatoes (my lack of
gardening knowledge killed the grapes), carry my own bags
when shopping, buy Fair Trade, recycle and ‘do what I can’.
But I can’t help but wonder: does anything really change?
Shouting at the TV
This isn’t to say that our individual choices aren’t good:
countless lives and possibly even ecosystems will be
improved through these kinds of personal commitments.
But I’m not convinced that our individual approach to
change is enough. Slavoj Zizek, a philosopher and critical
theorist from Slovenia, expresses the limited impact of
our personal good deeds:
‘We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan
who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home,
shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this
will somehow influence the game’s outcome’ (Zizek, cited
at http://www.goodreads.com).
The image is haunting, isn’t it? Am I, from within the
comfort of my good deeds and good home, shouting at
the television set hoping that I will somehow change the
direction of history? (Or maybe flicking the channel to look
for something else?) Is this what my good deeds mean?
Worse still, I have the nagging feeling that the difference
I long for has been co-opted back into the same deathdealing system that I’m opposing and seeking to reform.
Think of climate change and how this is now seamlessly
incorporated into marketing and shopping. The message
is deceptively conservative—we only have to change what
it is we’re consuming (not how we’re consuming) and we’ll
redeem the future of the planet. We can switch to ecofriendly washing liquid, without having to question our
consumption of water and power. Switching products may
be a step towards change, but it’s not a leap.
Think of poverty. There is now a multitude of companies
(local and multinational) who, in good faith, harness our
consumer habits in favour of the poor. We pay a little
more for our latte or whatever it is we have-to-have, and
we give something to the poor (a pair of shoes, a goat, a
fair price) It’s guilt-free consuming: without challenging
the consumer culture we’re entangled in. The message
we get is that ‘caring individuals can end poverty directly,
without the necessity for political organisation or systemic
restructuring’ (Fisher, 2009:15). Meanwhile, in communities
and nations far-far away, the death-dealing global system
that is dependent on our complicity is left without any real
interference, and continues in its poverty-making.
The difference I try to make, and the dissent I pride myself
on, has simply become commodified and sold back to me
through even newer products and newer spin.
→ This paper does not necessarily represent the official views of The Salvation Army.
We welcome your feedback + Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit | New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga Territory | Auckland Office: PO Box 76249, Manukau
City, e: [email protected], p: (09) 261 0883, m: 027 450 6944, f: (09) 262 4103 | Wellington Office: p: (04) 802 6269
If, however, we’re sitting within the camp of social justice
(and that probably means within the concerns of the
have-nots), then we typically read the Scriptures and our
own social context with eyes of interconnectedness and
relationships. The life of the have-nots has been stolen
and is to be returned. The entrenchment of poverty is
a problem of how the global (and local) community is
socially organised; and the solution is found in changing
the system. The change we long for—our good news—is
largely concerned with a new future; with the hope of
something new bursting into the indifferent inhumanness
of the present (c.f. Brueggemann, 2001).
I know this distinction is crude (and possibly polarising)
and is never this clear-cut. But discovering where we sit
(whether it’s within the camp of the haves or within the
camp of the have-nots) is critical in determining how we
read the Scriptures and how we think we should respond.
Has anything really changed? Where can we go to learn
how to engage in meaningful change that will lead to
something that is genuinely life-giving?
The Scandal of The Good Samaritan
The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) is a
Scriptural story, as familiar as an old friend, and often used
in our popular dialect when discussing ‘do-gooders’. But
this subversive story goes head to head with death-dealing
powers, and helps us reorient our shared lives towards lifegiving love, grace and justice.
Charity or social justice?
Firstly, the question that Jesus asks the lawyer: ‘What
is written in the Law?... How do you read it?’ (Luke 10:26,
emphasis mine).
How we read, how we see, will depend largely on how
we view the world we live in. How we engage with and
read public issues—the public debates on alcohol, child
poverty, indebtedness, the aging population, crime and
punishment, the foreshore and seabed and welfare
reform—will depend largely on where you and I sit. If we’re
sitting within the camp of charity (and that possibly means
within the concerns of the haves), we will generally read
the Scriptures and our own social context with eyes that
personalise or privatise problems.
The life of the haves is a gift and is to be celebrated and
protected. Social issues, on the other hand, are a litany
of individual, personal problems that demand private
interventions and self-reliant solutions. The existence
of poverty is, therefore, imagined to be a problem of
personal character (Giroux, 2009). The change we desire—
our good news—is largely concerned with the durability,
management or maintenance of what already is (c.f.
Brueggemann, 2001).
Getting off the donkey
The Parable’s flow of events is deeply entrenched within
our imaginations. We know that a man is mugged and
left half-dead on a notorious stretch of highway between
Jerusalem and Jericho. We know, too, that a travelling
priest and a Levite notice the man. But entangled in and
fearful of death-dealing powers, they fail to see the man.
They both ‘pass by’ (Luke 10:31-32) indifferent to his need.
Now look closely at the movements of the Samaritan:
‘But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man
was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went
to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.
Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn
and took care of him’ (Luke 10:33–35).
The Samaritan had to get down from his donkey to get
close to the man, and had to stay off the donkey to
position the man on it: a downward movement for the
Samaritan, and a redemptive lift for the half-dead man.
There is more. Dr. Chris Marshall, at a conference in 2010 on
Public Christianity, helped me see that while the elite and
power-full sat on donkeys, the power-less servants lead
them from the front. Through the simple act of placing
the power-less man on the donkey, and then leading the
donkey and the man to the inn, the Samaritan turned
deeply-held expectations of power upside down. The
cultural hatred and death-dealing injustices that kept the
power-full distant from the power-less were defeated in
this simple downward move.
Social justice involves a rearranging of power-relations, a
reciprocal reorganisation of relationships. Social justice is
a downward movement of grace and mutual self-sacrifice
that, when expressed collectively, holds the promise of
enabling something hopeful and surprising to emerge.
Individual acts of private charity, which generally involve
helping the poor without engaging with the social
causes of injustice or poverty, can sometimes end in selfjustification and a prolonging of the problem (Luke 10:2729). Social justice, in contrast, engages in the eradication
of injustices and seeks to reorganise society to eliminate
poverty. Stop a moment and reflect: are we open to the
radical demands of dwelling with and as the lowest?
… And that brings me to the most notorious of figures in
this story.
The parable of the good inn keeper
The Parable of the Good Samaritan could have ended
without a mention of the inn or the innkeeper. Is Jesus
poised to flip even more cultural codes? He is. Inns and
innkeepers were infamous and commonly known to be
people and places of debauchery, dishonesty and violence.
They were considered to be dealers-in-death.
By ending this story with the Samaritan going to the inn
and entrusting the innkeeper with the care of the halfdead man, not to mention the money, Jesus is continuing
to invert the cultural expectations of His day.
‘… Grace flows through a despised “half breed” Samaritan’,
and then again, through a ‘decadent scoundrel’, notes
Bruce W. Longenecker (2009:445). ‘And in this way, the
story … might well be recognised not solely as a notable
moral tale, but as a story that scandalises entrenched
perceptions of reality.’
The conventional image of who is our neighbour, and who
is capable of being a good neighbour, has been stretched;
opening up a space for even newer actions and possibilities.
How elastic, how embracing is our love? How expansive,
how graceful is our practice of neighbourliness? How deep
is our solidarity?
The Parable of the Good Samaritan is a timeless (and
timely) reminder of how life-giving change only comes
from a countering embrace of the other; from within a
change in power-relations; from coalitions with the edges;
from connecting the dots of our little and seemingly
insignificant conversations with the concerns of others on
the margins.
The change can start in me or with my family, but for it to
be genuinely life-giving, it has to stretch its legs and it has
to invite others to make the trip; and sometimes in unlikely
company. There has to be, in the provocative imagery of
Zizek, ‘Christians and Marxists fighting on the same side of
the barricade’ (Oudshoorn, 2009). Extend this imagery, and
imagine who’d be the excluded person protesting shoulderto-shoulder with you? A Haitian, solo parent, child, Maori
activist, churchgoer, disabled job seeker, a Costa Rican
coffee-maker, convicted criminal, gay, Pacific Islander,
Muslim, gang-member, refugee, senior citizen, a depressed
teenager, Vietnamese toy-maker, a member of UNITE, a
welfare beneficiary, a business that lost everything in the
Christchurch earthquake, a widow?
A Sacrament Of The Good Samaritan
The descriptive imagery of the Parable of the Good
Samaritan is deeply embedded within the history of The
Salvation Army. William Booth called the early engagement
of Salvationists with the poor a ‘… sacrament of the Good
Samaritan’.
Reorganising our communities to give ‘new life’ demands
more than the creation of holy huddles and isolated
groups; they’re easy to make and merely play the same
power-games as the death-dealing system. Restructuring
our (global and local) neighbourhoods to be life-giving,
will necessitate that we create a new social movement of
minor voices. This is something that connects deeply with
the mission of The Salvation Army.
Now, more than ever, we have to be careful how we define
our engagement with others: is our core involvement with
others a matter of charity or is it a matter of social justice?
The life-giving change we seek will only come when
we learn to humbly recognise our dependence on and
interconnection with others; that we do (and must) share
responsibility. Without a sense of collective identity,
the alternative critique that we stage is too narrow,
our naming of sin is too private and the salvation we
demonstrate is too scant. The life-giving sea change we
seek will only come when we, in the often-quoted imagery
of John Wesley, relearn that:
Questions for Discussion
‘The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social;
no holiness but social holiness.’
1. The author feels entangled within the death-dealing
powers operating globally and locally? How have you felt
complicit with these powers?
In New Zealand, some fairly complex and contestable
social issues will shape 2011 (and probably the next
decade): the social cost of alcohol abuse, young people
leaving school without employment or qualifications,
crime and punishment, race relations, senior citizens,
household debt and other lingering hang-overs from the
global economic crisis.
The growing gap between the haves and the have-nots
will have to be lessened, if not eliminated. Eradicating
inequality and injustice will be better for everyone, poor
and rich.
The reform of our welfare system will embroil the country
in something of a national moment of truth. Where do
welfare beneficiaries fit into our collective story? How can
we keep a straight face and say that embedded poverty
is something of a momentary ‘hiccup’ that can be fixed
with a little careful budgeting—when the cost of housing,
food, transport, schooling and power continue to go up,
and while the real cash-value of the social welfare benefit
drops?
These issues hold the potential to be either death-dealing
or life-giving and, whether we like it or not, they’re ours to
own. We’re complicit in them; they’re our historical debts
and they will dominate the look and feel of our shared
future.
Now is the time for every corner of our communities to
reconnect and think through how we will respond. Now
is the time to repeat the downwardly mobile movement
of the Samaritan and—with other excluded, marginalised
neighbours—reorganise ourselves into prophetic
alternatives that resemble something more of the new
creation we seek.
Now is not the time to sit back and say, ‘I didn’t know’.
Beaudoin, Thomas M. (2009) After Purity: Contesting Theocapitalism. Downloadable from
http://www.ptsem.edu/iym/lectures/2001/Beaudoin-After.pdf
Fisher, M (2009) Capitalist Realism – Is there no alternative? Winchester: Zero Books.
Giroux, H. (2009) Youth in a Suspect Society. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Longenecker, B. W. (2009) “The Story of the Samaritan and the Innkeeper (Luke10:30-35): A
Study in Character Rehabilitation,” Biblical Interpretation 17 (2009) 422-477.
Marshall, C. (2005) The Little Book of Biblical Justice. USA: Good Books.
Oudshoorn, D. (2009) Abandoning Our Home Amongst Impotent Powers: Pursuing New
Creation in Solidarity with the Poor, cited at http://poserorprophet.wordpress.com/
2. Do you agree with the distinction made between the
camps of charity and social justice? Typically, which camp
do you think you sit in? How does this impact on your
reading of Scripture and your reading of public issues?
3. The Parable of the Good Samaritan emphasises the
importance of proximity with the poor and downward
mobility. How could you live in closer proximity with the
poor? How could you move downward? How could you
join with others to change the dynamics of power in your
context?
4. The mission statement of The Salvation Army in New
Zealand, Fiji and Tonga is sharp and demanding. It says
that, without discrimination and through the love of God,
we will care for people, seek the transformation of lives
(ours and the lives of others) and will work to reform
society. How and where have your corps/small group/
centre/programme made this mission statement your
collective story? How do you see this statement becoming
the story of those who surround you?