Who Is My Neighbour? Reading the Good Samaritan in the Context of the Coup

Abstract

The parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) is a classic paradigm of perception and blindness. The story reflects ideas of identity in the time of Jesus but also raises issues that are pressing in our world today and the tendency to divide humanity into categories. This parable challenges us to question this categorization, to step across the boundaries it draws. Drawing on firsthand experience of the coup and Covid, this article seeks to read the parable and explores how it challenges us to rethink our identity and role in the context of a serious political and humanitarian crisis. It also examines how some neighbouring nations’ failure to show their humanitarian aid toward the victims of the coup are analogous to the priest and Levite’s failure to help the victim beaten up by robbers. The article suggests that the good Samaritan’s neighbourly act of assisting the victim serves as a moral example for reconsidering the identity of the church and her cross-cultural act of healing, assisting, and advocating for the victims, prisoners, and refugees.