The Samaritanizing of Politics

Let’s begin with an activity. In the following passage are blank spaces with numbers. When there is a _____1_____, insert the political party you identify with. When there is a _____2_____, insert the political party you oppose. As you begin reading, if the passage seems familiar, don’t stop. In fact, I encourage you to read the passage out-loud with your insertions so that you may hear the words around you.

Just then a _____1_____ political scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to live life in its fullest?”

He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?”

He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence — and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”

“Good answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you’ll live.”

Looking for a loophole, he asked, “And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?”

Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was once a _____1_____ traveling from Washington D.C. to Baltimore. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a _____1_____ congressman was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a _____1_____ senator showed up; he also avoided the injured man.

“A _____2_____ traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him into his vehicle, brought him to a hotel, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out his wallet and gave all the money he had to the manager, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill — I’ll pay you on my way back.’

“What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?”

“The one who treated him kindly,” the political scholar responded.

Jesus said, “Go and do the same.”

Now, for some of you, even reading a parable where the opposing political party is hailed as the hero has probably made you cringe. You may, like the ‘political scholar’ in the passage, have found that saying, through gritted teeth, “the one who treated him kindly” was easier to say than saying that the one who was in the right was the _____2_____.

This visceral resistance to the opposing political party is what I call the “samaritanizing” of politics. In this political season it has become abundantly clear that we have lost the ability to hear the other side. We refuse to give up any room for the possibility of the other side holding or offering anything “good” and we demonize them as being wholly bad. In fact, the parable above doesn’t actually capture the gravity of our polarized political system at the moment because in the parable the _____1_____ was actually able to grant, even if not by directly naming, that the _____2_____ was the one who was correct.

Take a look at your Facebook Newsfeed and find the comment section of any political post (I know, there are many). Can you find a dialogue that is respectful of opposing opinions? A dialogue in which one is able to hear the opposing side and is open to being changed? Can you find a conversation that actually stays on topic and doesn’t try to bring in other items in order to detract from the topic at hand? — which usually means one can’t defend the current topic but is unwilling to say so and must then either defend their party as a whole or attack the other. It would be as if the political scholar of the parable ignored Jesus’ question and responded “well, sure, the congressman and senator didn’t stop, but…”

We find ourselves within a culture that cannot allow for the opposing side to hold any goodness, nor for our own side to hold any wrong. And so, we demonize, dehumanize, and “other” the opposing side to such a state that everything they do, everything they say is to be rejected. The further we remove the other side from our reality, the easier it is to reject them, despise them, and even hate them. They become the reason for everything wrong. They become the reason for why things don’t work and why our current lives are not going as well as they should. In psychology this is known as projection — where we project onto the other the bad within ourselves so that we may not feel the weight of its shame and allows for a means to indirectly reject that which we despise and fear within ourselves.

We are a culture that cannot bear our own brokenness.

In Jesus’ day, this polarization was immediately seen between the Jews and the Samaritans. These two groups despised each other — and even that is saying it lightly. You can see that this ill-will extended beyond a mere dislike of the other and into a realm of dehumanization in passages like this:

My whole being loathes two nations,
the third is not even a people:

The inhabitants of Seir and Philistia,
and the foolish people who dwell in Shechem. (Sirach, 50:26–26)

For the people of Seir and Philistia, there was mere dislike: An “I don’t like them, but I’ll acknowledge their existence.” However, for the people of Shechem, the capital city for the Samaritans, they were not to be seen as human beings. This is the hatred the Jews held for Samaritans and this dehumanization allowed for them, including the disciples of Jesus, to wish the worst upon them:

When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. (Luke 9:51–55)

By removing the humanity of the other, we psychologically create space to hate without limit. We also remove our ability to listen and hear the other. To see the goodness in the other. To acknowledge the bad within ourselves. To be changed and to offer change.

There are many political conversations happening that are only being presented and heard as attacks on a party as a whole, rather than as individual events in need of discussion. The inability of a party to name their own wrong without jumping to excuse it or demonize the other side as worse will forever leave us unable to become better than we are. We must learn to acknowledge and sit with our own brokenness. We must be able to label things as wrong and leave the conversation at that. And we must be able to acknowledge and name the goodness found in the other side. Because no side is wholly bad or wrong.

In John 4, Jesus speaks not only with a Samaritan but with a Samaritan woman (gasp!) — a conversation that left people “marveled” (John 4:27). Because to come across a conversation where two opposing sides are actually respecting one another, hearing one another, respectfully pushing back on one another, and being changed by one another is so foreign these days (and, apparently, then) that all one can do in witnessing it is marvel. Yet, it is this kind of interaction that Jesus invites us into.

As this political season continues, may we learn to truly hear one another. May we see the humanity in the other side and may we begin to name and own the brokenness within our own party. May we come to know that neither party is wholly good or wholly bad and that Jesus is not afraid to cross party lines. And, ultimately, may we come to see the _____2_____ as our neighbor.