Who is My Neighbor?

Reva Lachica Moore

The desire to do good – to help the less-fortunate – is not an inherent trait. Rather, it is acquired through one’s upbringing, environmental surroundings, association with people, and more importantly, a willingness to help placed in one’s heart by God.
J.R. and I have been sending help to one of the poorest families in the Philippines . A family with 12 children, living in a one-room shack on a beach. And because people are generally jealous, we send help to this family very discreetly. But somehow, each time we send help, a certain group of people would find out, and would say the cruelest things to the poor family. “What did you do to deserve their help? You are a disgrace to the church.”
And to the minister with whom we send the help for the poor family, the same jealous people said, “You have to tell the Moores the truth about these people. They are not who they think they are. They are not deserving of their help!”
Truly, there will always be jealous people. Those who do not want another person to get ahead of them, especially financially and materially. When they see someone down on his luck, they can never see his pain. Instead, with scornful words, they’d blame the person’s misfortunes on his laziness and other things.
Some jealous folks would go to the extent of talking bad about the family “being helped” because jealousy is such an evil thing; it wouldn’t stop until the pain is terribly inflected on someone.
In the Bible, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the two passers-by who did not help the injured man are like the jealous people whom I am talking about. They only thought about themselves, and didn’t want to help the down-trodden. However, the parable did not say that they tried to stop the Good Samaritan from doing his good deed, unlike the jealous people I am talking about.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the parable, but let us look at the story of the Good Samaritan again in Luke 10: 25 – 37:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you read it?”
The expert in the law answered: “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho , when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper.

‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for an extra expense you may have.’
“Which do you think of these three was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Now, what compels me is – this parable was told in answer to the question: “How do I inherit eternal life?” If this is a basis for eternal life, surely, many will come short.
And with the people who are very jealous of the poor family whom we are helping, they not only refuse to help, they wanted us to stop sending them help. And they are even finding ways to stop us from purchasing a piece of land to build the poor family a small house. In my opinion, they are worse than the Levite and the priest in the story of the Good Samaritan. In reality, they are the ones who give Jesus a bad name for being selfish people and unhelpful to others. They definitely do not know that helping others plays a huge role in entering heaven.