Overview
A demanding parable for a divided age
You know the story. A traveler beaten and left for dead. A priest who walks past. A Levite who does the same. And the unlikely hero whose name has become shorthand for ordinary kindness. But what if our familiarity with this beloved parable is precisely what keeps us from hearing what Jesus actually said?
In an age of deepening polarization, when loving our enemies feels harder than ever, Arthur Boers invites us back to Luke 10 with fresh eyes—and a tender awareness of how trauma shapes the way we see, ignore, and harm one another. Drawing on his own experience as a survivor of childhood abuse, decades of pastoral ministry, and the wisdom of trauma-informed theology, Boers reveals a parable far more demanding than the sentimental “Good Samaritan” of hospital signs and roadside laws. This is a story about crossing dangerous lines of hostility, attending to victims our culture would rather we pass by, and—most startling of all—receiving mercy from those we’ve been taught to despise.
Verse by verse, Boers unfolds the parable’s grit and grace, weaving Scripture with personal confession, contemporary witness, and the hard-won insights of trauma research. Along the way, he asks the questions we’ve been avoiding: Who are the wounded we keep walking past? Whose mercy might heal us? And what does it actually cost to “go and do likewise”?
This is a book for every reader weary of the world’s divisions and longing to learn how to be a neighbor again. As Boers writes: “The much-loved, over-cited Samaritan story has a surprise or two in store for all of us.”
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