It’s interesting to think that the story wasn’t that the good Samaritan had to go into every town and locate all the people who might be sick or dying and then find a plan to alleviate all of those. Even Jesus, who could literally heal people just by a word or a touch, and yet it says in Mark 1 that he went to the other towns. He didn’t stay when everyone could have been healed if he would’ve just stayed there. So even Jesus understood that, as fully God and fully man, he had bodily human limitations. And in order to do what was his first priority, which was to preach the gospel, he had to go over to the next town.

Our Limited Capacities

I read an article a few years ago that had this phrase: “the infinite extensibility of guilt.” And the idea is that particularly in this digital age—where we can see millions or billions of people through their digital media and follow them on all the social media sites—we have access to people’s hopes, dreams, fears, pain, and suffering. And with that access comes this infinite extensibility of guilt that we feel. Should I be doing something with all of these problems—these intractable problems?

And it may sound pious to suggest that you ought to do something about all of them. But really it’s not, because it doesn’t allow for our own finitude. Only God is able to handle 8 billion people making requests to him. Only God is able to comprehend and handle an entire globe of joys and catastrophes and needs. The human psyche isn’t meant to bear that. And I know the danger is that you’re going to be the opposite of the good Samaritan and you’re not going to care for the needs that are around you. But even there, remember in the parable that Jesus refused to answer the question, “Who is my neighbor?” What was more important was to understand just what it means to be a neighbor. And what it means to be a neighbor is like the good Samaritan.

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