It's been awhile since I last posted to my blog. This is primarily due to my exhaustion after our last trip to Southern Africa. We have also been launching our new education initiative in Zimbabwe called “Project Aspire.” In between all the busyness, I've been reflecting on the trip and what first peaked my curiosity about Zimbabwe. The night of the book launch in Johannesburg, I shared with those present what started me on this fateful journey...

As a child attending church at St Alphonsis in Greendale Wisconsin, I remember hearing the story of the Good Samaritan for the first time. There was something in my soul that was immediately attracted to the story though at the time I didn't understand what it was. I just knew that it deeply moved me and that there was something profoundly right about it. Due to the fact that no one ever explained to me what a "Gospel" or "Epistle" were, I was 18 years old before I discovered that the story was from the Bible!  Other than on Sunday mornings, the words Gospel & Epistle were never used in any other context of my life. On the night of June 30th, 1975, I had an extremely overwhelming and personal confrontation with God that set me on a course of discovery about who He really was. I wanted no part of institutional Christianity, as I had seen it as defensive in nature, self-righteous in attitude and destructive in application.  More people had died over the last 2000 years in the name of God than I could fathom. Jesus had said "Blessed are the peacemakers" and yet the history of Christianity suggested that few actually believed that. It's a rather embarrassing memory but in the Fall of 1975 I was with a group of Christian young people who had grown up in the church. The leader of the group asked us to turn to Luke 10:25 in our Bibles. In a moment of innocent glee, I blurted out "I didn't know the story of the Good Samaritan was in the Bible!"  The whole group started laughing at me as of course they had grown up knowing this was the case. I instantly realized just how naive I was.

In time I was to discover that naiveté has its benefits if it is equally coupled with curiosity. Let me explain. Over the years I have come to see that many within the Christian community have become overly confident in their assumptions of what they think they know about Jesus. This has led to laziness and a subtle but dangerous assumption that because they know it, they practice it. People make huge, sweeping statements based on something they heard someone else say (or the environment they grew up in) without actually looking into the matter for themselves. Frankly that scares me!  The story of the Good Samaritan is a excellent example that few Christians actually understand the real message behind the story. They grew up hearing and seeing the story played out on a flannel graph in Sunday School. They think the story is simply about being compassionate to the unfortunate when in fact it goes much deeper than that. If one is curious enough and digs down further, one discovers that Jesus is actually teaching about loving ones enemies - something that few Christians are actually prepared to do. In fact, even though most all the religions of the world agree that Jesus teachings reflect the heart of God, they too find this one simple truth nearly impossible to embrace. Like Christians they find it hard to actually live out this principle as it requires us to give up the bad attitudes we've held onto for generations and love those who misunderstand or persecute us. It requires us to quit being victims and be proactive in finding reconciliation and resolution.

Jesus was born into a persecuted, oppressed and subjugated people. In 64 BCE the Roman General Pompey conquered Jerusalem and made the Jewish kingdom a client state of Rome. His teachings weren't spoken from an island paradise while he was in exile. He grew up watching the Romans marching through the streets taking what they wanted and putting down with a vengeance anything they saw as a threat. He saw blood on the streets, people taxed to the point of oppression and racism in every strata of society. He witnessed firsthand the arrogance of the Romans and the humiliation of his own people. Despite enormous pressure to raise up a guerilla force, he resisted and preached peace and reconciliation.  He told people that his kingdom was "within".  His teaching flew in the face of conventional wisdom and the popular public opinion of the time. He was after the motive of people's hearts as he knew that if hearts were transformed they would in turn transform nations. His story of the Good Samaritan was both stunning and scandalous to the crowd he was talking to. In their minds there was no such thing as a Good Samaritan!  To the Jewish people, the Samaritans were mixed breed heretics. Let me explain.

Around 1200 B.C. after Joshua died, the High Priest Eli built a new tabernacle in the hills of Shiloh in a region called Samaria. In 722 B.C., Sargon II of Assyria attacked and conquered the ten Jewish tribes of northern Israel. Samaria was laid waste and Sargon deported the Jews back to Assyria as slaves. Just under 300 years later when Ezra & Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls, they were greeted by an excited "remnant of Jews" still living in the area. Ezra rejected their help due to the fact that they had intermarried with pagan non-Hebrew wives. This insulted and incensed the Samaritans and they began resisting the effort to rebuild Jerusalem. The Samaritans continued worshiping God at their temple at Mount Gerizim north of Jerusalem. This is located near the modern day Palestinian city of Nablus in the West Bank. They continued doing this even after the temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt. Years later in 167 B.C. the notorious Seleucid (Greek) King Antiochus Epiphanes ruled this region. He was determined to Hellenize the people and become their God even under the threat of death. In order to save their lives, the Samaritans agreed to adopt Greek culture while those in Jerusalem refused and became self-righteous about it.  They considered their northern neighbors the Samaritans as "sell outs." After the Romans conquered the region, the Samaritan temple was rebuilt and their High Priest established their own version of the Torah. The enmity between the two groups reached such a fevered pitch that Jews cursed the Samaritans. In fact Jesus disciples James & John suggested to him that they call fire down from heaven to destroy them (Luke 9:54). Jews refused to let Samaritans' covert to Judaism and believed they were headed for eternal damnation. They avoided each other at all cost. Jews would even travel the long way around Samaria into Jordon to avoid being contaminated by the Samaritans.

In the midst of this cultural and religious battle that had been going on for centuries, Jesus tells his Jewish countrymen to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself". (Luke 10:27) When a self-righteous expert in the law condescendingly asks Jesus "And who is my neighbor?"  He proceeds to rock his world by telling him a story that if his heart is not pure it will offend him in every sense. In the story, men who the Jews would have considered righteous men (a Priest & Levite) both pass by the wounded traveler who had been beaten leaving him to bleed to death on the side of the road. It was the mixed breed heretic Samaritan that in fact had the right heart - the heart of God. This was scandalous and today would have been a headline in the tabloids.