| First and foremost – the founders and leaders of uCan believe that Jesus Christ set the supreme example of how we
should live our lives and how we should treat each other. The United Citizens' Action Network
is not a religious organization. Indeed you can have
any religious beliefs or no religious beliefs at all
and be a welcome member of uCan. Nevertheless, each
of us must have some standard of truth upon which to
build our concept of right and wrong.
We believe that Jesus Christ, the Savior of the
world, lived the only perfect life, and we look
toward Him for our standard of truth.
The story of the good Samaritan was a commentary on discrimination based on race and ethnicity.
It is a story that almost everyone has heard but few
understand what was being taught. In the story the
Savior teaches us how we all should treat people who
are different from ourselves. If you would like
to read the parable from the book of Luke in the
King James version of the Holy Bible you can follow
this link.
What had prompted the story was a "certain
lawyer" ask the Savoir what he must do to have
eternal life. The lawyer was not sincere. He was
only trying to trick Him, but Jesus answered him
anyway. Jesus said, "A certain man went down from
Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which
stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and
departed, leaving him half dead." Then a priest and
then a Levite came by, but they both crossed the
street and left the poor man without giving any aid.
But then a Samaritan came long. The Samaritan "had compassion on him,"
and treated his wounds, took him to an inn and
took care of him. Then in the morning, when the
Samaritan was about to leave, he gave money to
the inn keeper and said "Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee."
Now the man who
had been robed was a Jew, as were the priest and the
Levite. Jews had great prejudice and contempt for
the Samaritans. They considered them unclean and
beneath themselves. Partly because of this but for
other reasons too, the Samaritans had no use for the
Jews. If Jesus was to tell the story today, in the
United States, He might say that "a certain white
man," fell among thieves, and that two white men
passed by on the other side, but a black man "had
compassion on him," and treated his wounds,
took him to an inn and took care of him.
In this story are we being taught that Samaritans
are good and Jews are bad, rather than the other way
around? Is there even anything being said about a
entire group of people? No, the parable is not a
testimonial on the relative goodness or evilness of
a people, but rather that all people, regardless of
what group they may be a part of, are individuals
and are entitled to be judged by their words and
actions and not by the attributes of their group.
This can not be said enough or with enough
emphasis: No one can look at the outward appearance
of a man or a woman and see their heart or their
character. While the statistical propensity of an
individual to behave one way or another can be drawn
from group data, there is no way to know how any one
individual will behave. Just like a mortality table
can tell and us almost exactly how many people will
die in a given period of time from a large group, we
can not know if a particular person will die or not.
We can and should use group date to understand
what is happening in our society. To not do so is
foolishness that can cause the downfall of our
society. We can not use group date to determined if
any particular individual is good, bad, smart,
stupid, or if that person has been discriminated
against.
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