I
recently read Greg McKeown’s million-copy bestseller Essentialism. McKeown challenges his readers to become essentialists—to identify what truly matters most in life and forsake the rest. He encourages us to do less, but better. I was already mid-way through decluttering my entire house (sayonara knickknacks and I-might-need-this-someday kitchen items!), so it seemed that this advice was just what I needed to declutter the rest of my life. Midway through reading Essentialism I also read Luke 10:2537 in which Jesus tells a story of a man stripped, beaten, and left for dead, and the three passersby who found him. With my new McKeown reading glasses on, I now saw the priest, Levite, and Samaritan as (aha!) essentialists, each with their particular goals, each shirking whatever distractions might try to come along and deter them. These men were, in fact, doing exactly what McKeown prescribed in the book. But we know this story from Sunday school, and even as children we knew that two of the three men were bad guys. It must be, then, that essentialism itself isn’t sufficient. And sure enough, Christ does not call us to essentialism, per se, beneficial as it may be. Clearly the Levite and the priest had their respective priorities in place. They crossed to the other side of the road because they had already chosen their path and they weren’t about to let some bloodied corpse throw them off as they sought a life of cleanliness and devotion to their religious convictions. So what is it about the Samaritan essentialist that separates him from the other two? We don’t have to scour the commentaries to get our answer. The narrative opens with two clear commands
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THE LUTHER AN AMBASSADOR
