Jesus, the Good Samaritan

One of my "pet peeves" is the fact that so many people of faith seem to think that their beliefs are the key to eternal life. Somehow people can't seem to comprehend that God, if God exists, is capable of figuring out that we people are helplessly ignorant of God's ways, and that we have no way of knowing who's beliefs are right among all the countless beliefs.

It makes far more sense to me to think that God is rather like the Good Samaritan as told by Jesus. The Good Samaritan picked up that dying fellow along the road without inquiring about his theological understandings. I posted the following a couple of years ago, and I hope it helps you see what I mean:


Originally posted on Yahooo Message Boards: 02/20/04 11:48 am

Think about the parable of the good Samaritan. In this story, Jesus presented the model of a true savior, the one who simply sees a dying man on the side of the road, and helps him without asking any questions, without requiring anything.

Notice that in the story, nothing is said that would indicate that the victim of the roadside crime ever spoke to or knew the person who saved him. The Samaritan simply picked him up in a state of unconsciousness and took him to someone else who could help him, and paid the bill.

That is our Savior, IMO. Too many Christians think that Jesus is waiting for a person to accept that He is God, that He rose from the dead, and that without such beliefs a person is not saved in the eyes of God. Sure, most Christians will say God takes us "just as we are" but there always seems to be this implied "grace period" in which the new convert must come to saving knowledge, that is, they must eventually accept the fundamental teachings.

But that's not how Jesus told the story. His was a tale of a compassionate person, a tolerant person who only saw the needs of others, and met them in the best way that he knew how.

Jesus also said that it would be the ones who do His teachings, not the ones who cry his name, who would be saved. While this seems in conflict with what I said earlier about the good Samaritan setting no requirements for salvation other than lying unconscious on the road, in fact it is not, because when it comes to things of God, all of us are lying unconscious on the road; God is a mystery, an unseen force, that cannot be pinned down with certainty, no matter how much we wish or believe that He can be understood. Thus, all are lost, all are beaten unconscious, and we remain in this state all our lives, at least with respect to an understanding of God, who is only understood through the mist and fog of a semi-conscious state, blurry, through a glass darkly. So given this state of things, about all we can do is follow the teachings of a great and respected teacher such as Jesus and hope for the best.

So that's why I say you don't have to believe certain things in order to be a Christian. Jesus never said you did, he only required that people live right, with the caveat that to those who are given more, more will be required. Thus, we see that salvation is not limited to people of certain religious leanings, nor is it linked to religion at all.