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Help others and discover your calling

angry-donkeyPeople who practise an unbiblical church-centric religion that fails to reflect the heart of God for people have anaemic spiritual lives, and their communities are underserved because of that misplaced institutional religious emphasis, according to Reggie McNeal in his book Get Off Your Donkey: Help Somebody and Help Yourself. The book is essentially an extended study of the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Nearly everyone knows the story from Luke chapter 10 concerning the priest and Levite who passed by the traveller who had been robbed, and the Samaritan with the donkey who stopped to help, but what does the story have to say to the church today? The author notes firstly that the Samaritan had to inconvenience himself, getting down to become engaged with the plight of the robbery victim, and secondly that Jesus instructed us to go and do likewise; not just to agree with the sentiment, but to actually follow the example.

The book goes on to make a number of pertinent observations, including:

  • Effective helping often requires partnering with others, just as the Samaritan partnered with the innkeeper
  • Doing good to others is good for you, by increasing your self-awareness, improving your connection with people, and helping you become all that God made you to be
  • Judgmentalism, prejudice, busyness, distraction, fear, indifference and apathy keep us from helping people that we should help
  • When we are too embarrassed to mention Jesus when we are serving people, people are left with a caricature of Jesus painted by some religious nut or poor church experiences or the media
  • You serve others most effectively when you find a way of serving that aligns with your passion, talent, personality, and experiences

I did not find any particularly new or startling insights in the book, but the author does provide a short, timely and important reminder of a key aspect of the Christian faith that many seem to have cast aside in a quest for political ascendancy or by withdrawing in reaction to a range of perceived threats to Christianity in the social environment.