Did you know that Jesus didn’t manufacture the Parable of the Good Samaritan out of thin air? He was actually drawing upon a story from the Old Testament (his Bible).

Jesus didn’t tell the Parable of the Good Samaritan so we would help people in need. He told the parable to smash our categories of who’s “in” and who’s “out”.

There’s a marked distinction between sympathy and empathy. Too many of us choose the former. The Good Samaritan chose the latter.

So often, we allow fear or inconvenience to drive our response to someone who is in need. A priest and Levite fail to help a man who is in great need, but a Samaritan does what they were unable or unwilling to do.

In Luke 10, Jesus is asked by an expert, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s a bad question, but not for the reasons you may think.