God's Nature
...other parables because it is so simple, yet so concrete that a child can understand its basic point. However, it is also an insightful and memorable exposition of practical moral principles. Many religious and secular people understand that the parable shows its effectiveness and its simplicity and depth. Unlike other parables, each figure in the story does not necessarily represent a spiritual equivalent. The whole narrative describes working compassion as contrasted to selfishness, of hate compared with love.
The parable of the Good Samaritan told by Jesus, struck a certain cord with me for a number of reasons. First of all, the parable can only be found in the Gospel of Luke and secondly, Luke's account on the life of Jesus is guaranteed to be trustworthy as well as orderly.
"And so your Excellency, because I have carefully studied all of these matters from their beginnings, I thought it would be good to write an orderly account for you." (Luke 1:4)
This passage reveals to its readers, the innermost problems of ethics and the point of ethical obligation. In this text it is the scholars, the wise and most learned that are exposed for what they are or are not. I found it interesting that the Gospel of Luke began differently than the other three Gospels. I wondered why Luke thought that his account of Jesus' life was more "orderly" than the other gospels in the New Testament. It raised a question of what Luke's purpose was in writing an account of the Gospel in dedication to Theophilus.
According to the Studying Jesus-Learning Christ, by Tom Yoder Neufeld, Luke already knew that there were many others that set themselves the task of writing presentations of what Jesus did, said, experienced, and why it mattered. Also we are aware of the Gospels of Thomas and Peter proving that we could not fathom how many gospels were actually written in that time where...
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