The Good Samaritan

Some people think being a Good Samaritan means leaving people in the ditch where you found them. They say we should teach them to wallow in mud and call it zen. That we should persuade these poor, broken people to justify every blow which wounded them and brought them low. That somehow this will cleanse their wounds.

My sense is that people ought to be helped out of the ditch, and that justifying the attack has nothing to do with healing the wounds.

As I see it, the ditch is the world, and the attacks are what we suffer here. When "God so loved the world", it was not the ditch he loved, but the ones who had fallen into the ditch; not the body, but the souls which had been ensnared by the flesh. The world, in that sense, is a company of souls, but when we speak of the world, we are talking about a more corporeal experience. And God, who justifies those who fall, does not thereby justify the fall.

The Son did not come to forge a path in the ditch, but to lead us back onto the higher path. "My kingdom is not of this world." The earth is not our path, but only a depression which runs alongside our path, and which we must take care not to fall into. Those who do not fall, descend only when it is necessary to help others climb out. Their work is greatly complicated, however, by the fact that many who have fallen have struck their heads and lost their wits. They do not believe they have fallen, and struggle against anyone who tries to lead them back onto the path.

No, they want to start families in the mud, and build temples out of mud in the mud. Like hostages suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, they seek to make the most of their captivity, having no hope for another life. They do not struggle to escape, but to convince themselves that they are already free. They scoff at talk of escape, and call it a fool's pleasure. Demons do not bother to guard them, for they shut the doors of their own cells and call it home.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free." (Goethe)