Who Do You Avoid Helping?

How often do you go out of your way to avoid helping someone?

Who are the people you will go to great lengths to avoid helping?

Luke 10:25-37 records Jesus' parable of The Good Samaritan. It's another one of Jesus' well-known parables. A reminder of the kind of person we should be. Often preached on with a call to be like the good Samaritan.

As I was reading it recently, I was challenged by a hard question. It's easy to move right to the actions of the good Samaritan when we read this. Those are easier words to read. They encourage us in what we should do.

But, I when I slowed down and read about the actions of the priest and the Levite in the story, I was challenged by something else. The priest and the Levite were both good Jewish men. They were religious leaders in Israel. Nowhere in His telling of this parable does Jesus say there was anything out of place religiously in these men.

The priest and the Levite went out of their way to avoid helping their fellow Jew who had been beaten and robbed. Verses 31 & 32 of Luke 10 tells us that they both passed by the man on the other side of the road from him. They made a choice to avoid the man and avoid helping him.

It made me wonder about my own life. How often do I go out of my way to avoid helping people? Who are the people I go out of my way to avoid helping?

In other words, how often is my response to someone in need of help to do what the priest and the Levite did? How often do I cross to the "other side of the road" to distance myself from someone in need and avoid helping them?

These aren't easy questions to wrestle with. They've challenged me to look at some things in my life it would be easier to pretend aren't there. But, it's also been very necessary, if I'm going to live the life Jesus has called His followers to live.

So maybe, along with being encouraged to respond the way the good Samaritan did, we also need to reflect on some other questions:

How often do I go out of my way to avoid helping someone?

Who are the people I go to great lengths to avoid helping?

What changes do I need to make here?

I think that last question is vitally important. If we stop at the first two it just get depressing. The last question is about the changes we can make, and how we can move forward.