Two Rules

Fred Craddock’s Luke commentary makes two urgent suggestions of preachers working on the parable of the Good Samaritan.

1. Don’t make the priest and the Levite out to be so evil as to be unrelatable. We are them.
2. Don’t make the Samaritan too familiar. The parable piles on the description of his remarkable actions; he’s not easily analogized.

These two rules of Craddock’s for this particular story are a good rule for all interpretation, I think. Don’t distort the baddies, and don’t domesticate the goodies.