he believed it would change the world. Indeed, if he did tell it for that purpose he must be feeling thoroughly disappointed now, 2,000 years on, for it manifestly hasn't.
Now, Jesus is no utopian socialist. Recall again the question with which this whole incident began, for that is the key to it. 'Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' (Luke 10:25). Here, remember, is a man under the monumental delusion that he can earn his ticket to heaven by good works. And the ultimate purpose of this story is to show that man that he could not. The only reason this scholar could deceive himself into thinking that he could earn his ticket to heaven that way was that he interpreted God's law of love in such a reductionist manner. Once the full extent of his moral obligation is made plain to him, once he examines his life without the fig-leaf of excuses and evasions to hide his failure behind, he quickly discovers that he is not the great moral expert he thought he was. He knows the theory all right, but the practice just isn't there.
We could not be further from the truth, then, when we suggest that Jesus was confirming this man in his Judaistic legalism when he says, 'Do this and you will live' (Luke 10:28). On the contrary, the whole point of his conversation is to strike a hammer-blow at that moral complacency of his.
That's the real reason this story stands in Luke's gospel. We misunderstand it completely if we think its primary purpose is to teach us our moral duty. It is intended, rather, to expose to us our moral bankruptcy. The good Samaritan is Jesus' demolition job on the self-righteousness of those who dare to justify themselves. 'Face up to the performance gap in your life,' the parable says. 'You know God's standards of love, but you don't keep them. Go away and try to keep them if you're so sure you can. But once you stop rationalizing your way out of the full force of God's command, once you stop emasculating the demands of love with comforting
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