Lord, Who Is My Neighbour?

Or - ‘Do I Really Have To Love Muslims, Lord?’

By Ronnie Bray

They asked Jesus a trick question. That was nothing unusual. It ranked equal with common
discomfiting questions asked of believers today such as, ‘When Cain slew Abel and took him a
wife, where did the wife come from?’ Jesus was too smart to be caught out by smart-mouthed
troublemakers that wanted him to say what was required of a person that wanted to be saved. It
was an invitation to a contest of wits in which it was intended Jesus would come off as loser.

The no-win situation is characterised by the unfortunate man whose wife bought him two
neckties for his birthday: a red one and a blue one. Thinking to please her, he took them to his
bedroom and promptly donned the blue tie before presenting his smiling and grateful face to his
donatrix for approval. Instead of sunshine, hearts, and flowers he got a scowl as she-with-hands-
on-hips demanded brusquely, “So, you don’t like the other one, eh?”

Jesus listened to the question and looked inside their hearts to read their intention. It was a talent
he had. His answer anticipated what they believed would be game, set, and match, but he played
them out of the court and into more reasonable frames of mind.

And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, “Master, what shall I do to
inherit eternal life?” Jesus said unto him, “What is written in the law? How readest thou? And he
answering said,

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God

with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind

and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

And Jesus said unto him, “Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.”

That is true religion in a nutshell. Love God with everything you have and love your neighbour
no less than you love yourself. It was the perfect counsel of perfection, for if men abided by its
simple precepts they would neither offend God nor any man.

But, thought the questioner, there might be an escape clause that I could use if the term
‘neighbour’ was not too strictly defined. Surely, neighbour could not mean every other person in
the world! So, the question to the answer that would change the world was asked in almost
breathless anticipation of an answer that would provide leeway so that there could be some that
this duty to treat as well as I treat myself does not apply!

“Er, Master, just whom do you say is my neighbour?”

There was a silence as the question settled in Jesus’ mind and he judged it for what it was – an
attempt to excuse a religious person from being as religious as he ought to be. As with all
questions that sought to tempt Jesus to furnish answers that were not too hard on those that
would be his followers if it wasn’t too hard, he weighed the consequences of what an inexact
answer might yield to the heart and mind of one that was less than rigorous in his observances
when it came to being wholehearted in spiritual life, in faith, and in obedience.

If there were any loopholes, Jesus knew how to close them so the man was left with no excuse
for non-compliance. Jesus’ face broke into a smile. Not one so large that he looked amused, but
one that hinted he was ready to answer the question and that it was cast iron, watertight,
bombproof, and incontrovertible.

Jesus could have used an Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman, the common characters of
British schoolboy humour used to make disputable points about national characteristics, but he
didn’t.

He strode into the story with the victim, a Jew, robbed, wounded, stripped naked, and beaten
close to death by assailants. The casualty lay in pools of his own blood by the side of the dusty
road. Unless he was quickly cared for he would surely die.

To get the real point of Jesus’ story, readers should, from this point forward, identify themselves
as the dying man by the side of a desert road, bleeding, thirsty, and likely to succumb to the heat
of the sun, dehydration, or from blood loss. Just slip yourself into his skin and share his
sufferings and fate, feeling everything that he felt, fearing everything that he feared. You will
soon get the hang of it.

This frame of mind is known as empathy. It requires that your pain equals his pain, your distress
feels exactly like his distress, and your level of hopeless despair matches his. When you can do
for another, then you are doing what Christ did when he endured agony for our sakes.

You, dear reader, are now the dying man. The man in the story is now you. You need not
become a Jew, just be yourself, a man or woman in desperate straits from which you cannot
extricate yourself.

Out of the very depths of your tortured soul, you call for help. However, there is none to hear
your urgent pleading. You despair. You pray. You faint, and then you rouse to the footfalls of a
rider coming towards you. Hope rises in your breast. You recognise the rider as a minister of
your church and raise your feeble hands towards him in supplication. Surely, he will save you!
He is a holy minister of your God. Your prayers are answered, and you bless the name of God
and the servant He has sent to deliver you. However, your deliverer, with a sneer of disdain,
reins his steed to the other side of the road, and rides on!

Such confusion races through your exhausted mind as you try to grasp what happened, and why
your priest ignored you. Your fear of immanent death intensifies as your hopes dip out of view.
You pray. You plead. Surely the Holy One of Israel will hear and answer. You faint away,
weak, sick, despairing.

Footfalls waken you as a church member approaches. His eyes meet your pleading gaze, but he
too turns from you and hurries on. Again, hope dies and you become delirious, sure that God is
being cruel to you allowing you to die seen by your co-religionists, but not acknowledged,
evidently in urgent need of care, but not aided.

Your now silent prayers bounce back from the seemingly empty vault of heaven. You are sure
that God has turned his ears from you - that your words no longer carry to his heart. You cannot
find any other explanation to visit on your wretched situation, and you know that you will surely
die on that spot.

After an interminable silence marked only by the sighing of a hot wind that pelts your face with
biting grains of sand, you open your cracked eyelids and see another approaching. Hope rises
yet again, but weaker, yet hope it is and your spirit is stirred. He reaches you, dismounts, and
you feel cool water on your cracked lips, trickling into your parched mouth, channelling down
your dry throat.

You are prepared to die, but the refreshment sweetens the moment of death, and, surprisingly,
you open your eyes. Your vision is misty as if peering through a ringing blue haze at a face that
is at once both strange and familiar.

An angel bends over you, cradling your sore head with his arm as he pours the sweetest water
you have ever tasted onto your lips. A little lapping of your leathern tongue and though you are
weak as if from a journey your mouth revives as the refreshing liquid courses down your throat
reviving your body somewhat and your confidence somewhat more.

You look again into the angel’s face and eyes. There is a familiarity about his countenance. The
mist clears a little revealing the angel’s features as you realise that you are not dead but alive.
Protest rises within you because you think you recognise the angel of your waking dream. And
the consolation that lifted your spirits dies as you see the clothing your seraph wears. He cannot
be a Christian! He has on a long white robe and his head is covered by a kufi that tells you he is
a Muslim. A Muslim! A hated, untrustworthy, violent, murderous enemy of God. A Muslim!

Your head drops back onto the rocky roadside and your dull eyes close as you let out a long, low
groan at the unspeakable cruelty of what you know are your last moments in mortality. Had you
the energy you would laugh at the incongruity of your situation.

Your prayers brought two that could save you - but didn’t, and now one that could - but won’t
because he is your religious enemy. You hate Muslims! Muslims eat Christian children and
drink their blood! Everyone knows that. God is playing games with you.

The irony bites your will and you are enveloped in the final despair of dying. You close your
eyes and slip off towards unconsciousness knowing that you will never awaken for an even
greater enemy than the thieves has you in his merciless clutches.

You have been raised to believe that this man and all his fellows held a false religion that was the
enemy and subverter of God’s profound spiritual truths. From your earliest days, you have not
heard any good thing about Muslims and their faith, Islam. It was told to you by those you loved
and trusted, and, therefore, you believed it. Now you are at the mercy of a Muslim infidel!
Your mind swims in circles searching for answers. If he is your enemy, then why is he giving
you water? Why has he not drawn his Khinjar and torn out your heart? Why is his voice angelic
and comforting? Why is he not screaming at you like a jinni?

There is a serenity that descends on those about to pass through death’s portal that enables the
dying to recognise greater truths than they have ever had the strength or generosity of spirit to
know during the fever of their lives. That serenity enables you now to behold he whom you have
always considered your deadly enemy as your liberator: the saver of your life.

This is odd. The situation is beyond your comprehension. You struggle to understand. Your
enemy speaks softly. He does not strangle you, stab you, beat you about the head with a rock,
but instead he gives you water. His courtly serene voice spreads a calm through your soul that
submerges your fears. His good will toward you is confirmed by the gentlest eyes you have ever
seen watching you with the tenderness of a mother watching her newborn child.

He moves slowly, deliberately, offering more water, never raising his voice above a comforting
whisper. His peace permeates your pain and you feel to trust the messenger of mercy. Your
thirst slaked, he binds your open wounds with strips he tears from the silken cloth he carries on
his pack beast. He places himself between the sun and you to shade you from its life sapping
fire, all the while assuring you in his gentle voice as he nods in affirmation of goodwill, and
carries on bandaging your broken flesh until you are rested, more awake, and your bleeding
finally staunched.

He pours oil and wine on your wounds, soaking the bandaging well, to aid healing before. Then,
with what you regard as superhuman strength, he raises you up from the ground in his arms and
places you on the saddle of his beast, supporting you with his arm and shoulder.

The journey into the city is uncomfortable, but your life is saved. The stranger has not asked
your name nor enquired into any aspect of your life, for he regards you only as a fellow man that
was in need of relief, and knew himself as one directed by God to rescue the perishing wherever
and whoever they were.

Those that could have helped but didn’t, asked themselves what might happen to them if they
did. Were the robbers hiding behind the rocks to jump out and get them, or were you part of an
elaborate trick to lure them into a danger zone where they would become victims of your savage
gang of thugs and robbers? The one that is helping you asked only what would become of you if
he did not help you. He risked his life to save yours.

Your rescuer raises his voice when he arrives at an inn, but only to summon aid. The innkeeper
and a helper emerge. They see your condition, carry you inside, and lay you on a bed. Your
Muslim ally delivers you into their care, handing them two silver coins for your keep with the
promise that he call at the inn when his journey is done, at which time he will pay whatever other
fees might be due.

He does not ask for repayment, because the love in his heart is limitless, and he does good
because it is right to do so, not because he might profit thereby.
You never learn his name, but you come to realise that his name is the least important thing
about him. Your body heals, but of greater moment is the healing that comes to your heart.

How can you continue to hate an enemy that saves your life, uses his costly goods to heal your
wounds, and carries you to a place of safety, pays for your care, and promises to pay even more
if need be?

As you heal at the inn, not knowing day from night, your mind is preoccupied with the events
that led to your being there and the intervention of one whose behaviour you could not ignore, no
more than you could ignore the hatred you had for him and his kind.

Your soul was elevated to a better and higher level of thinking as you recognised that prejudices
involves untruths that might be the worst kind of lies because they remain lodged inside minds
like unexploded bombs and are rarely, if ever, exposed to our critical examination.

Seeing a Samaritan in positive light was a shock to those listening to Jesus, although is was
typical of his provocative style of speaking in which conventional expectations are turned on
their heads. Seeing the Muslim in a positive light, unless you are either a Muslim or not weighed
down with the clutter of prejudice, will have had the same effect on you. That is the intention.

Jesus made his hearers face their fears, prejudices, and the darkness that was inside them. The
Good Samaritan was the perfect way of showing them how far God wants them to move from
the selfish and bigoted people they were so that they came to where they could receive eternal
life.

This story brings you face to face your own fears, prejudices, and the darkness that is inside
those that hate Muslims for no reason other than some Muslims have done some terrible things,
and your darkness will not allow you to see the good done by the vast majority of good loving
and kind Muslims. It is certain that in turning from all Muslims your behaviour is the very same
kind that Jesus found unacceptable in candidates for eternal life. Those that hold prejudice
against all because of what a few of their number have done are of the same spirit as those that
passed you by in your distress and left you to die. The point of Jesus’ story is that such are
denied eternal life.

The question of the legal expert asked was intended to show him how he could slither out of the
moral cul-de-sac in which Jesus had him corralled and hog-tied by trying to find a way to
exclude some from the category of his ‘Neighbour.’

He had asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. The answer to that question is not, “Jesus
saves!” The answer is an instruction that our failure to observe results in the loss of salvation.
The answer to the question “What must I do?” is not, “Jesus has your back, carry on,” but, “Go
thou and do likewise.” The ‘likewise’ being to be positively and actively concerned for the
welfare and care of others, regardless of their nationality or faith.
Jesus gave the wriggling worm of a man looking for a wormhole to crawl though and escape
doing his duty to his neighbour the eternal principle enjoined in Leviticus 19:18, “Thou shalt not
avenge nor bear any grudge, but shall love thy neighbour as thyself.”

His question was, “What, Lord, even a Samaritan?”

To which Jesus answers exactly as he does to those today that ask, “What, Lord, even a
Muslim?” To which comes his answer, ringing down the centuries, “Yes! Especially Muslims!”

“But, Lord,” you protest, “They are not Christians. How can you even ask me to love and
respect them when they hate me?”

Jesus was ready for that objection. He took in a deep breath and looked at the questioner with a
penetrating gaze, his face set like flint, to deliver a teaching that separates the wheat from the
tares. He speaks intently, measuring his words and in a tone that is unmistakable. The Saviour
lays out the rule that means eternal life to those that obey it, and

“Muslims do not hate you. Muslims, just as you do, try to live according to the divine light they
have received. But, even if they did hate you, that would not be an excuse that would work for
you.”

“But,” he objects, “It is not right to love those that hate you. It is contrary to human nature.”

“Human nature,” says Jesus, gently now, “is the enemy of God. It is human nature that turns
men against God and makes humanity less than it was created to be. Overcoming the impulse to
behave according to the flesh by yielding to the inspiration of the Spirit of God is essential if you
would have eternal life.”

“But, Lord … ” Jesus interrupts him to press the teaching that this man must learn if he is to
draw near to God, fulfil the measure of his creation, and become godly in all his dealings. Jesus
continues,

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But
I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and
pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; for by so doing ye become the
children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. And if ye only love them that love you,
what reward do you hope for? Even the ungodly do that? And if ye welcome and greet only
your brethren, what do ye do that is more than others do? You have seen thieving tax collectors
do that much?

“You say you want eternal life. If you really do want eternal life, then you must change your
ways, your heart, your attitude, and your inner spirit, and become perfect, even as your Father
which is in heaven is perfect.”

“What, Lord, even Samaritans and Muslims?”

Jesus had given the only answer there was. It falls to men to hear and obey.

The history of God’s dealings with humanity is replete with instances of people that will not hear
him and obey. To such cases, the prophet Zechariah wrote, “They refused to listen, and turned
their backs, and stopped their ears with their fingers that they might not hear.”

God's judgements against ancient Israel for refusing to be obedient to God provide stern
warnings to today’s Christians that the duties God requires of them are not empty words and
rituals, but doing justly and loving mercy, both of which move us to act for the welfare and peace
of all, regardless of nation, colour, creed, or faith.

In the teachings of Jesus, ‘neighbours’ are not restricted to only Samaritans and Muslims. Our
neighbours in God’s eyes are those of all faiths, sects, and denominations whether we accept
their version of religion or spirituality or not.

What? Could it mean that Pagans are my neighbours? What about Atheists? Are they my
neighbours? Moreover, what about those that malign my sacred faith and tell me I am a child of
the Devil? Are they also my neighbours to whom I owe the same duty of care that the Samaritan
bestowed on the Jew?

Not one human being in the entire world can free him or herself from the sacred responsibility
that Almighty God has laid on our heads to seek out and care for the needy, the naked, the
hungry, the hurting, and the lost. There is no passage in all the holy books in the world that
permits us to escape our administering that divinely imposed duty to all others with all the
compassion, love, and strength we have.

The law of God lays restraints upon human hearts to do good to all, but the rebellious fill their
minds with prejudices even against the word of God. Nothing is harder or more obdurate than
the heart of an impudent and openly rebellious sinner who refuses to conform his or her life to
the revealed will of God.

Wilful disobedience to God is a great sin that brings God’s sternest anger and judgement that
cannot be withstood. Deliberate sin spoils the realisation of prayer. The Lord hears the cry of
the broken-hearted penitent, but those who live impenitent and unbelieving should expect no
remedy or salvation from tribulation through the intercession of the Redeemer because their
rebellion and disobedience shows their scorn for him and God, and those that turn their back on
God and his precepts and teachings also turn their back on the greatest gift that God gives to his
children, which is eternal life.

If our hatreds and prejudices are stronger than our love for God and his promises, then we must
not expect any reward from him we have rejected and despised.

We have the example of the Good Samaritan, the Good Shepherd, and now the Good Muslim as
beacons in darkness, and must ‘go and do likewise’ if we would inherit eternal life. There is no
other way!
© 2010 - Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED