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We instinctively tend to limit for whom we exert ourselves. We do it for people like us, and for people whom we like. Jesus will have none of that. By depicting a Samaritan helping a Jew, Jesus could not have found a more forceful way to say that anyone at all in need - regardless of race, politics, class, and religion - is your neighbour. Not everyone is your brother or sister in faith, but everyone is your neighbour, and you must love your neighbour.
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jesus
good-samaritan
neighbour
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Timothy Keller |
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If they had had a different neighbour, one less sel-absorbed and more concerned for others, a man of normal, charitable instincts, their desperate state would not have gone unnoticed, their distress-signals would have been heard, and perhaps they would have been rescued by now. Certainly they appeared utterly depraved, corrupt, vile and odious; but it is rare for those who have sunk so low not to be degraded in the process, and there comes a point, moreover, where the unfortunate and the infamous are grouped together, merged in a single, fateful world. They are les miserables - the outcasts, the underdogs. And who is to blame? Is it not the most fallen who have most need for charity?
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compassion
les-misérables
neighbour
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Victor Hugo |
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Just as when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.
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family
life
love
down-syndrome
garden-leave
neighbour
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Cecelia Ahern |
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But you are proof that you can think you know someone yet never really know them at all.
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family
life
love
down-syndrome
garden-leave
neighbour
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Cecelia Ahern |