Who is my neighbor?

A discussion with Jesus:

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Just then an expert in the law stood up to test Him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the law?” He asked him. “How do you read it?”

He answered:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.

“You’ve answered correctly,” He told him. “Do this and you will live.”
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Luke 10:25-28

The answer here is based on the Old Testament.

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Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
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Deuteronomy 6:5

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Do not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your community, but love your neighbor as yourself; I am Yahweh.
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Leviticus 19:18

When Ruth, the Moabite, joined the Israelites, she said:

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your people will be my people,
and your God will be my God.
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Ruth 1:16

This reflects the same two principles as expressed in Luke above.

The story from Luke continues:

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But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Jesus took up the question and said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and fled, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way, a Levite, when he arrived at the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion. He went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him. When I come back I’ll reimburse you for whatever extra you spend.’

“Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

“The one who showed mercy to him,” he said.

Then Jesus told him, “Go and do the same.”
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Luke 10:29-37

I have the impression that Christians interpret this story to mean that everyone is your neighbor, but the words of the story itself contradict this view.  Jesus is asked "Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor" and answers "The one who showed mercy".  Jesus did not answer that all three are neighbors.

Who were the Samaritans?  The Samaritans were another religion that worshipped the same god as the Jews but with a somewhat different Bible and beliefs.  Read Wikipedia for details.  In many ways, the difference between the Jews and Samaritans at the time of Jesus is similar to the difference between Jews and Christians today.

In this story, Jesus is telling us who he thinks is our neighbor and who is NOT our neighbor.  The concept of neighbor means member of one's community.  At the time of the Old Testament, this question wasn't an issue because people lived in a close community.  But Rome changed this and created a cosmopolitan empire where many different people lived together.  This introduced the question of how people should be grouped; by race, by belief, or by what?  Jesus's view is that a community is defined by a group of people who would help each other and who share the same god even if their race and their specific beliefs about God differ.  Why did Jesus choose to contrast the Samaritan with a priest and a Levite?  Because the priest represents shared belief and the Levite represents ancestry.  So Jesus chose these two as examples of things that aren't a valid basis of defining a neighbor: belief and ancestry.  What counts is people who are willing to help each other.

When Jesus said "Go and do the same", he meant to form communities of people who help each other.  This is exactly what the Mikraite community is about.  And this is in sharp contrast to all modern religions.  Judaism is about ancestry and Christianity is about belief.  Both Judaism and Christianity violate Jesus's message in the Good Samaritan story.  If you want to follow Jesus's message here, become a Mikraite.

Brilliant! I'll share this with the minister friend and see what he says.

This is what happens to "good Samaritans" who help the wrong people:

http://newobserveronline.com/south-african-leftists-driven-off-farm-by-refugees/

The trouble is that it is difficult to tell who is a neighbor and who is not a neighbor in a society with so many people in which it is impossible to know everyone. In the past, people tended to live in smaller towns and farming villages, and therefore it was in everyone's self-interest to be nice to everyone else in order to improve their social standing. If you chose not to help anyone and be a neighbor to anyone, then no one would feel an obligation to be a neighbor to you. In contrast, in today's society there is a sense that few people will know if you choose to be neighborly to others or not, and that people will not treat you differently regardless of what you do.

Also, there is always a danger in today's society that if you are neighborly to someone, they will take advantage of you. In a smaller community, this wouldn't be much of a problem, as you would know if someone had a history of taking advantage of others, and people would be less inclined to take advantage of others because of the social consequences. Thinking of an example from my life, I was previously quite generous with giving money to homeless people. In particular, there was one homeless woman in my old college town who I developed a quasi-friendship with, as she seemed eager to get to know me and talk with me. I gave her a considerable amount of money in smaller increments over the course of two years, totaling a few hundred dollars. Then I learned from a local restaurant owner that she wasn't actually homeless and was just a con artist. Since then, I have been very hesitant to give homeless people money, even though many of them are probably desperate and need the money. In a smaller community where everyone knew each other, I would have never been scammed like that, and I would not feel the same hesitation about giving money to homeless people that I feel now.

The question is, how do we establish a sense of trust and neighborly attitudes in a community that is too large for everyone to know each other? Obviously, this isn't a problem for Mikraite at this point, since we are only a virtual community and will remain small for the foreseeable future even if we turn into a physical community. But theoretically, how would we enforce a sense of a community where everyone helps each other if we grew significantly in size?

qwerty wrote

The question is, how do we establish a sense of trust and neighborly attitudes in a community that is too large for everyone to know each other?

The Old Testament answer is to judge people by their actions.  Not all actions are easy to judge.  That is why we chose as our Mikraite rules things that are relatively easy to judge.  One can instantly see if someone has a visible tattoo or dresses immodestly and disqualify them.  Keeping the sabbath is a little harder to judge but not that hard.  Someone who makes the effort to keep that sabbath is more likely to be trustworthy.

The way all this worked in early America is that everyone belonged to a church and one could easily judge a person by asking the leader of his church about him.  This is discussed in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002GJGIDQ/

If Mikraite grows, I would assume we would also be organized into communities and one could check about a person by talking to others in his community.