“And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.” (Luke 10:30-34). In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite see the man beaten and left for dead and they “pass by on the other side.” “The other side” is a common euphemism for where the souls of the departed go after they die. When we see someone in dire need of help and we pass by on the other side, essentially we are saying to ourselves that they are dead already, they're on the other side already, and thus they don't need our help and that is why we can't be bothered to help them. If we found a loved one or a friend on the brink of death, we would do everything we possibly could to keep them alive and help them get better. But if we draw lines between who is our neighbor and who isn't, then we are deciding who is a genuine human being worthy of respect and compassion and at the very least enough first aid to keep them alive and who is not really a real person, but instead at best is someone who maybe used to be a living, breathing person but who has since passed on to the other side. It is not for us to judge whether a person deserves to live or deserves to die. If we don't treat everyone as still on this side and still capable of feeling both pain and relief the same as we are and thus utterly deserving our every effort to bind up their wounds and taking care of them, then our Savior will with deepest regret have to inform us that we have passed so far to the other side that only with genuine and sincere repentance will He be able to bring us back the side of the living. I hope that we will always remember that those who are suffering are still here on this side with us and we have the power to help them if we will only admit that they are in fact still alive.
