The Good Samaritan is a gun. At least, it is in the Hellboy series of films.
Hellboy is a comic book character created by Mike Mignola who has then appeared in two films directed by Guillermo del Toro. In these stories, Hellboy is a demon brought to Earth as an infant by Nazi occultists but is discovered and brought up by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm, who forms the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense for which Hellboy fights against dark forces of evil. In the stories, he is identified as the "World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator."
In these stories this gun was given to Hellboy at a young age by the Torch of Liberty and it is named ‘The Samaritan’ after Jesus’ parable. The gun was built specially to fight evil and supernatural enemies. Its metal was formed from silver church bells, nails from the crucifixion of Jesus, various blessed chalices, and other forms of silver and copper (known elements for fighting evil) with its handle being carved from the cross to which Jesus was nailed.
I mention all this because what has occurred in the use made of Jesus’ parable in the Hellboy stories is that the meaning and point of Jesus’ parable has been completely reversed. The parable challenges us to love our neighbour and, through the story he tells, Jesus specifically identifies our neighbours as being those in need; more specifically still those who have been attacked by others.
Hellboy, by contrast, uses a gun called ‘The Samaritan’ made from elements of the cross and church silver to attack and to kill others. There is no love of enemies in what he does instead he is engaged in a fight to the death with the forces of evil. So, invoking the Samaritan and Christ’s death in what he is doing is a complete reversal of the parable and of the meaning of the crucifixion.
Coming across this misuse and misunderstanding of the parable led me to question whether there are other ways in which we misunderstand and misuse this parable. One way in which I think we can do this is that we overlook the extent to which Jews and Samaritans were enemies, partly because they were people of different faiths.
When Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well they discussed aspects of their different faiths, in particular the different locations where worship took place in their different faiths. Jesus’ disciples were shocked to find him talking with this woman, in part, because she was a Samaritan; the writer of John’s Gospel tells us that Jews did not associate with Samaritans. In Luke 9 we read of James and John taking the Hellboy route by wanting to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village which had not welcomed Jesus. Their response reveals the enmity which existed between Jews and Samaritans. So the parable of the Good Samaritan is a parable about relationships between people of different faiths who are also enemies. It may even have been the case that Jesus began composing the story in response to this incident with James and John.
Dinah Roe Kendall has painted a version of the Good Samaritan which sets the story in South Africa at the time of apartheid. Doing so is an accurate parallel with the kinds of emotions and cultural practices that were at place in the relationship between Jews and Samaritans and it shows up clearly the sting in the denouement of Jesus’ story. Jesus didn’t illustrate his point - that people of every race, colour, class, creed, faith, sexuality, and level of ability are our neighbours – by telling a story in which a Jew was kind to someone else. Instead, he told a story in which a Jew receives help from a person who was his enemy. The equivalent in Kendall’s painting is of the black man helping the white man who represents the people that have oppressed him and his people.
So Kendall’s version of the story brings out part of the sting in the tail that Jesus gives this story; the sense of receiving help from the person who is your enemy. What her version doesn’t deal with, however, is the idea that the enemy who helps is someone of another faith. The Jews were God’s chosen people and a light to the other nations and faith, so what would have been expected from this story would have been for the Jew in the story to bring the light of faith to the Samaritan. But that is not how Jesus’ story unfolds. Instead, the person who is one of God’s chosen people receives from the person of another faith.
To find a contemporary equivalent for this aspect of the story, we have to think about relationships in this country between Christians and those of other faiths, and within these relationships, recognise that relationships between Christians and Muslims are those which are currently most conflicted with some Christians believing that Islam represents a threat to the Church and Western civilization.
Within this context, the parable of the Good Samaritan challenges Christians as to what we can receive from those of other faiths and, particularly, those who we might view as enemies. Jesus says to us through this parable that loving our neighbours is not simply about what we can give to others but also about what we receive from others. If our focus is just on what we can give then we are in a paternalistic relationship with our neighbours or enemies. If our focus is just on what we can give then we are saying we hold all the aces and we will generously share some of them with you. In other words, we remain in a position of power and influence. Immediately we acknowledge that we can receive from our neighbours or enemies, then the balance of power shifts and we make ourselves vulnerable. In this parable, Jesus says that that is where true love is to be found and it is something that he went on to demonstrate by making himself vulnerable and open to and through death on the cross.
So, where have we got to with all this? We began with Hellboy and the idea of blowing our enemies out of the water using the Samaritan in order to see that that is the absolute reverse of Jesus’ teaching in this parable. From there we thought about the aspect of the story that is to do with our neighbour as being those in need.
But that aspect of the parable does not get to the heart of the parable because our neighbour is also portrayed here as being our enemy, and more than that an enemy of another faith. But even Jesus’ teachings about love for enemies don’t get us to the heart of what he is portraying in this story because, if love for enemies just means our giving to others then we remain in the moral ascendency towards them.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the twist in the tail is that one of God’s chosen people receives help from his enemy who is of another faith, Jesus is taking us deeper still into the heart of love and saying that we will not truly love our neighbour until we understand and accept that we have much to receive from those that we perceive to be our enemies. In other words, true love of our neighbour means that we receive as well as give.
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30 Seconds To Mars - A Beautiful Lie.
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