The parable of the good Samaritan: Why didn't they travel together?

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The original question to Jesus was ‘And who is my neighbour?’

Four people travel a road from Jerusalem to Jericho where there are robbers. Each travels separately in a short space of time.
The first is attacked.
A priest passes by, presumably of the current Judaic faith.
A Levite passes by, a member of the ‘holy tribe’.
A Samaritan, who only accepted a certain form of Judaism not accepted in contemporary society, helped the victim.

Both Jerusalem and Jericho are symbols of unity. Both are cities with walls for protection. The walls of Jericho were only destroyed by multiple trumpet players and God’s influence.

Rather than focus on the good of the Samaritan, the outsider, why not focus on the question: Why didn’t all four travel together? There is strength in numbers. The attack would have been avoided.

Love Thy Neighbour…
 
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Do you usually plan to get together with three other strangers when you take a business trip?

Also, there’s not necessarily safety in numbers. If someone is traveling without goods or otherwise looking like an unattractive robbery target, then it’s not somehow more safe for him to travel with another person who has money and items to steal. Plus there is the odds of being attacked - if robbers only tend to attack 25 percent of the travelers, because they don’t have time or inclination to rob everyone, or they only pick victims who look like easy marks for some reason, then the other 75 percent whom robbers can’t or don’t bother attacking will escape without injury while the robbers are not robbing for some reason.
 
You miss the point.

Is it not better to travel Jesus’ Way together regardless of creed?
 
I think the vast majority of people already do this. When Hurricane Harvey hits, we don’t go house to house asking what creed, if any, a person espouses before we rescue them in a boat, feed them a hot meal or open the shelter, even the Catholic shelter.

Doesn’t mean we toss religion out the window though, which is what I fear you are getting at based on your other posts. “Love thy neighbor” is all very fine and good; subscribing to the idea of “and no religion, too” like the Imagine song, or saying one religion or no religion is as good as the other, is quite another thing.
 
So? Jesus frequently selected non-Jews as the good examples of his stories to point up to the Jews that they were acting like a bunch of hypocrites. Jesus himself continued to be a practicing Jew, right up to the end.
 
Surely a parable is a story constructed to teach a spiritual lesson or moral. To deconstruct the parable along such lines would seem to miss the whole point of the story. Would those who heard Jesus relate the parable have had such questions?
 
This is a parable. If they had all travelled together, the parable would not have illustrated what Christ wanted to teach.
 
Annie said:
This is a parable. If they had all travelled together, the parable would not have illustrated what Christ wanted to teach.
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Beat me by less than 60 seconds 😮

Yep, Jesus was telling his story the way that he wanted to tell it.
 
A swan glides slowly on the surface of the water…
A dove descends…
 
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Do you not see I am trying to save the Church?
The Church is dying. Priest numbers are down. The number of religious brothers and sisters has halved in 50 years.
In two generations it will be gone unless it adapts.

Reconciling its teachings with the secular world is the only way and that requires compromise.
 
This is false. Seminary numbers are up from a decade ago. Someone posted on another thread.

Religious belief, as a whole, is simply down in Europe and America–but we’re a very, very small portion of the world population.
 
JustLamb said:
Do you not see I am trying to save the Church?
The Church is dying. Priest numbers are down. The number of religious brothers and sisters has halved in 50 years.
In two generations it will be gone unless it adapts.

Reconciling its teachings with the secular world is the only way and that requires compromise.
Click to expand...
“Saving the Church” by twisting the message of a parable into an understanding that Jesus didn’t intend?
 
JustLamb said:
Why didn’t all four travel together? There is strength in numbers. The attack would have been avoided.
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Jesus was responding to the question “Who is my neighbor?”

Had the scholar of the law asked Jesus “How can I travel safely?” perhaps Jesus would have told the parable your way.
 
JustLamb said:
Do you not see I am trying to save the Church?

The Church is dying. Priest numbers are down. The number of religious brothers and sisters has halved in 50 years.

In two generations it will be gone unless it adapts.

Reconciling its teachings with the secular world is the only way and that requires compromise.
Click to expand...
Keep thinking up those new ideas. I wouldn’t say your idea is “the only way,” but I think you are on to something, that we could do a better job at explaining to people how Catholicism can meet their needs, give greater meaning to their lives, improve relationships, solve societal problems, and so on. Teens and young adults desperately need this.
 
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This is the passage:


Things happen as they happen…
What you are suggesting is kind of the thinking in hindersight.
“If we had travelled together…” but that is not of God. It happened as it happened.
Now ,from now on…,who knows it is better to take a different road,go in pairs,etc etc etc.
But it is over, and it doesn t come to the point changing what cannot be changed.
Improve as from now on. The past is gone.
And this is how real life works…
 
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The end of religious orders would be bad, but will not result in the end of the Church, as the Church on earth is the sum of the laity, religious, and the ordained…and, Jesus told us the hell would not prevail over his Church.
 
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