Among my favorite Gospel readings from my childhood was the one for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary time. This contains the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 26-38). The story comes up in the context of “a certain lawyer,” who is disturbed to learn that one must love one’s neighbor as well as God in order to achieve salvation. The narrative then proceeds:
But he [the lawyer] willing to justify himself, said to Jesus: And who is my neighbour? [30] And Jesus answering, said: A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, who also stripped him, and having wounded him went away, leaving him half dead.
[31] And it chanced, that a certain priest went down the same way: and seeing him, passed by.[32] In like manner also a Levite, when he was near the place and saw him, passed by. [33] But a certain Samarita-38)n being on his journey, came near him; and seeing him, was moved with compassion. [34] And going up to him, bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine: and setting him upon his own beast, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. [35] And the next day he took out two pence, and gave to the host, and said: Take care of him; and whatsoever thou shalt spend over and above, I, at my return, will repay thee.
[36] Which of these three, in thy opinion, was neighbour to him that fell among the robbers?[37] But he said: He that shewed mercy to him. And Jesus said to him: Go, and do thou in like manner. [38]
While I think it is generally true that Catholics do not study the Bible that much, they do know certain stories very well simply because they are regularly repeated as part of the mass. I must say that it is to the Church’s credit that this particular story became part of the regular readings. For me it was always a quintessentially Christian story, at least in my understanding of the faith I was raised in. As Samaritans and Jews apparently loathed each other in Jesus' times, the story acts as a powerful vision of a kind of universal neighborliness, the very opposite of what we see in the proverb “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Dal Kalsi and Adrian Acosta have a post on foxcarolina in which they detail how Ken Shupe, a tow truck driver from and rock crawling enthusiast, was called to pick up a woman who was stranded in Asheville on I-26, after she was apparently hit by a trailer tractor (this detail is the HuffPost story, cited below). When he arrived,
he saw “a bunch of Bernie Sanders stuff” he said he told the woman, “very politely,” that he could’t tow her car because she was “obviously a socialist” and advised her to “call the government” for a tow.
"Every business dealing in recent history with a socialist minded person I have not gotten paid," Shupe said. "Every time I deal with these people I get 'Berned' with an 'e' not a 'u'."
Shupe, who runs Shupee Max Towing in Travelers Rest, said he is a conservative Christian who supports Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
More below the fold.
The unfortunate woman in question was Cassandra McWade, who was dumbfounded by his attitude, as the Huffington Post reports. “He said, ‘I can’t tow you ... you’re a Bernie supporter,’” McWade recalled. “I was like, ‘Wait, are you serious? You’re kidding me.’” After being abandoned by Mr. Shupe, she had to wait an additional two hours for help to arrive. To make matters even worse, she is disabled, with “psoriatic arthritis, impaired mobility, early stage Crohn’s disease, severe fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. (She sent HuffPost a picture of the disability tag, as well as a photo of her many medications.)” She was unable to walk to the exit or even lift the hood of her car due to back issues. As she says, “I was dependent on anybody who was willing to help me, completely dependent.”
Mr. Shupe justifies his actions by saying that he did not notice her disability tag, but “if he had known about her disabilities, he still would not have towed her car, but he would have waited with her for another service to arrive.” Now there’s a comforting image. Did he perhaps imagine discussing politics with her? Or something else? It’s apparently dangerous to advertise your Democratic affiliation in South Carolina, for “if someone had stickers supporting Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton on their car, he probably wouldn’t tow them either.” In a YouTube video, distances himself a bit from his actions, although in a ludicrously self-justifying and self flattering way claiming that “. . . something came over me, I think the Lord came to me and I think he said get in the truck and leave” (my transcription). To make sure you know what a good person he is (surely the priest and the Levite would have said the same thing) Mr. Shupe invites anyone willing to “come to South Carolina and go to Waffle House with me, [where] you would see very quickly I’m the farthest thing from a bigot or a racist.” Apparently politics don’t matter when it comes to waffles (I assume there would be separate checks). His latter remark is strange, however, because no one had actually called him a racist, although his reflexive defense makes one wonder.
Whether or not Mr. Shupe is a bigot or a racist, he certainly ain’t no Good Samaritan.