|
After the priest has passed by comes a Levite that way. He too sees the injured man and pretends not to see him, and makes a detour so that he wouldn't have to respond to the man's needs in his tragedy. There are countless such 'Levites' in the world, and society adores them. It adores them for their grandiose mansions, their splashy yachts, or cars, plains, or their 50-million dollar wedding parties, etc... Today's 'Levites' are those that fall into the 20% of the upper income bracket that claim 80% of the national income so that the remaining 80% of the population has to make do with the remaining 20% share that rich haven't bothered to steal yet. I am harsh, in saying this, but unfortunately the reality is actually worse. In today's world the Levite would not make a detour around the injured man in the parable. He would stop at the dying man to see if the thieves have missed something that might be of value.
I am not making this up, because the 'Levite' always finds something to steal. This week, for example, in early September 2005, the wheels appears to have been set in motion with the road clear ahead to privatize Japan's Postal Savings Bank that holds nearly all of the Japanese people's savings, in order that their savings too may be devoted to the financial gambling circus, as are the savings of everyone in America already and in many places around the world. It has been reported recently that some of the US commercial banks hold gambling contract in amounts that are reaching upwards to a hundred times the value of their equity and tens of times their depositors' assets that were entrusted into their care, which are put on the roulette tables by the banks to generate shareholder profits while society, the depositors, assume the risk for the gambling without being aware of it and without recourse.
These are just some of the huge crimes that are being committed against society by the 'Levites' of today, and society hails their success, being 'Levites' themselves at heart.
In the parable that Christ Jesus presented, a third man comes that way, a Samaritan. He is the only person in the story that meets the criterion that Christ Jesus had set up as a requirement for a person to stand before the altar of God to be fit to offer gifts for atonement, or to engage in healing in Christian Science.
The Samaritan bind's up the man's wound's, pours in oil and wine to cleanses the injured man's wounds, and then puts him onto his own mule. He makes his fellowman, who requires this help, his own direct responsibility. He takes the injured man to where his recovery can be assured. He takes him not to a poorhouse, but to an inn where he takes care of all his needs till his full recovery. It appears that the Samaritan knows something about the Principle of Universal Love and responds in accord with this principle. I believe that the quality of the Samaritan's response was not inspired merely by compassion for an injured man. Compassion doesn't raise the threshold to such a high level. Instead he responded to the demands of an imperative principle, which left him no option but to respond in the manner he did.
Here comes the open question. Does our love for one-another as human beings measure up to his response, reflected in unyielding action until the task of creating a new renaissance in the world is done? I don't think that there are many people in the modern world that can say, yes. I'm not even sure that I can say yes on many an aspect of this question, though I have labored for over twenty years to research the dimension of the Principle of Universal Love, a process that turned out to far greater than I imagined, and to write a series of nine novels and a series of research books about it, which too, turned out to be a far bigger project than I ever thought it would become.
Mary Baker Eddy, apparently, was following the Samaritan's path in the leading of the Christ. And perhaps it may have been on this foundation that she could stand up in the world and say, "There is but one I or Us," (Science and Health 588:11, 591:16) or say that the very concept of humanity being a sea of isolated spirits and souls is an invalid concept (Science and Health 466:16). In her eyes, humanity is one. It is singular and universal, reflecting the divine Being, a universal divine Soul as its own soul. With this stand Mary Baker Eddy aligned herself with another one of Christ Jesus' counsels (Matthew 25:31). I am referring here to his parable of the king who took account of his people and praised some, saying that they came to him when he was sick, or in prison, or in need and supported him. And they answered astonished, saying that they did no such thing to him, to which he plied that they did all these things to him in as much as they did them to the least of the people in his kingdom.
Next Page
|| - page index -
|| - chapter index -
|| - Exit -
||
|
