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Lebanon-Israel Conflict: a conversation

26 July 2006 No Comment

Joel directed me to this series of articles regarding the Lebanon-Israel Conflict:

David Gushee’s Original article The first article to be posted
A Lebanese Perspective on the Conflict and a disappointed response to David Gushee
An Open Letter to Martin Accad in response to his article
Further Reflections by Martin Accad

Here is a paragraph from the last one I found extremely intriguing (but not specifically about the conflict in any way):
“And who is my neighbor?” an expert of the law asks in fury, annoyed with Jesus’ message and behavior that frustrates every notion of conventional “righteousness” (Luke 10:29). Jesus embarks on one of his breathtaking stories about a man, a “righteous” man, apparently the hero of the narrative, suddenly transformed into the “enemy,” replaced by a new hero, a Samaritan, an “unrighteous” man. New Testament scholars have pointed out that in this story, the man called to love his enemy is not the Samaritan, but actually the man who lay wounded, stripped of his clothes, half dead. For he, rather than the Samaritan, is the character in the story with whom Jesus’ audience would have been able to identify. By inviting the wounded to accept to be helped by his conventional enemy, Jesus calls every one of us to accept to be helped by God, the “outcast,” whom we have rejected.

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