Dondi
Well-Known Member
Cage,
Check your PM's .
Thomas,
By the way perhaps you might post one more. Your number of posts on the last one was 666![]()
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Love in Christ,
JM
What are you accusing Thomas of being, JM?
Could it be....Satan?
Cage,
Check your PM's .
Thomas,
By the way perhaps you might post one more. Your number of posts on the last one was 666![]()
![]()
Love in Christ,
JM
some of you may be interested to know that there is a jewish law which states that if you find a dead body and there is nobody there to bury him but yourself (as bodies must be buried before nightfall) then you must do it, even if you are a priest or a levite. such a body is known as a met mitzvah - ie it is a commandment to deal with it, even if you have to contract midras (corpse uncleanness) to do so for someone who is not your relative in the correct degree. the priest and the levite were clearly both in breach of this law, so jesus's criticism of them and his praise of a man who did the correct thing (even though he was a samaritan) is thus entirely jewishly based. samaritans were not well thought of by the jews at that time (or indeed later on, including nowadays) due to their habit of switching sides, engaging in political backstabbing to prevent jewish independence and not least their supercession theology. this is a group that tried to prevent the building of the second Temple by knocking the walls down every night. thus it is, to this audience, a serious criticism, to say the least, that a samaritan should be seen to behave more correctly than members of the priestly establishment.
b'shalom
bananabrain
I submit that it is NOT judgement or judging that you are speaking of, but it is condemning. Huge difference. The priest and the Levite turned a blind eye thinking they were not responsible if they did not get involved. It is not for judgement they were wrong, but for their lack of judgement. It is not for using their mind that they were wrong, but for NOT using their mind. They condemned the man and yet believed that a person is innocent for NOT judging. I see that apathy in the world today and a large portion of the cause is from calling for NO judgement... as if a person is condemned for judging and NOT responsible for what he does NOT get involved in... or that a person is GOOD to NOT judge. In the parable of the sheep and the goats, were the sheep that were sent to heaven the ones that did NOT do something, and the goats that went to hell the ones that DID something? I submit that it is the other way around. Did the Levite and Priest even open their mouth to ask what happened? Did they walk by and even provide the man with a judgement and advice on how to avoid being robbed? No... they gathered no information to even judge. They did not want to be responsible. Furthermore, what good is judgement to a person who is half dead? If the soul of a person is not judged by the words that he has heard, but rather a person is judged by the words that he authors... and the person laying on the ground was not speaking then there was nothing to judge. I submit that judgement and judging is what Jesus (pbuh) provided the lawyer and anyone he spoke with.This lesson shows the value of not being judgemental. We see, by the actions of the Priest and the Levite, the inordinate focus on "the letter of the law" at the expense of the spirit of the law. It wasn't necessarily a matter of conscience, at least for the priest, it was a matter of legal decorum. They could not be defiled with "unclean" things. Now, it could be argued, depending, that the Levite could have defiled himself and paid whatever ransom and washed and gone before the priest and been "adjudicated" as clean again. Of course, that is such a hassle.
The Samaritan, a despised low life dog in the eyes of the others, was not concerned with the formalities...he was concerned with the welfare of a fellow human being. This lesson was given to Jews, to a Jew, to whom a Samaritan was a waste of life and breath. The Greeks of the time were thought more highly of. Yet, though all of this stigma, G-d worked a good work, a Holy Spiritual work, through someone deemed unworthy.
It tells me that no one, no matter how unworthy I might think or believe they are, no one is truly unworthy in the eyes of G-d. There may be those who resist G-d and deny G-d and refuse G-d, but none are unworthy. At least, if such as an unworthy exists, it is not my place to cast judgement.
A Samaritan, a person uniformly judged by fellow humans as unworthy, was used as an instrument of the Holy Spirit. Think of someone who in your mind seems unworthy...and see if it is in them yet to do good, to do what G-d would want us to do.
Be careful in judgement...if your (collective, not addressed to anyone in particular) criteria is perfection, no one will pass muster. No one will pass muster including yourself. So yes, there may be those who do things you may not bear to bring yourself to do, perhaps even rightly so. But if that person who has a fault does good for G-d's sake, and you don't...I really hesitate to try to make that call. Not after Jesus gave us the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Very sad, but very true.If anything the Samaritan would probably get sued today for using judgement... as if he were wrong for not asking the half-dead man what hospital he wanted to go to, or what Inn he preferred, or for not being a fully qualified, registered, bonded, and insured Samaritan. Afterall providing undesired acts of kindness are illegal... just ask the Levite and the Priest.