Titanic wrote:Flashlegs point is actually really relevant. Why didn he say 3 guys walked past. 1st one was rich, second one was middle class, third one was poor but still helped. He deliberately mentioned the Samaritan, as if to say "You dont expect this of them, because there normally low scum who are involved in crime etc.." Its racist to an extent, but I think he was using Samaritans as an example, rather then picking on that group as a stereotype.
Yeah, that’s exactly my point - he's not being overtly racist here (i.e. preaching racial hatred or anything like that) but he uses racial stereotyping - which in my book is racist.
And to the other point raised by Jay and Heavycola that you can read anything into scripture, I completely agree - that’s why the Bible has stayed around so long - you can selectively quote it to prove what ever you want, it suits everyone!
I always wonder why Christians selectively choose what parts of the Bible to follow and ignore some, the ones supposedly "over ruled" by Jesus.
If you actually read the Bible - the parts where the Old Testament laws are overruled are really to do with Paul taking over the early Christian movement. Why do Christians put so much faith in this part? Paul/Saul was a Roman - he never met Jesus in the flesh, he was distrusted by the disciples. Paul hijacked the early movement and took it to the Gentiles and so he could preach more effectively to them he cut out the need for all the restrictive old laws (circumcision, not eating pork, animal sacrifices etc). Jesus didn't do this editing - Paul did.