Adding on, the context of the parable is important. The parable was given in response to a lawyer who asked what was needed to gain eternal life. Jesus flipped it back on him and asked what the law recorded by Moses said. The lawyer replied with, ‘you must love THE LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.’ Jesus replied that was correct, do that and he’d live. But then the lawyer asked who his neighbor was.

The parable was Jesus’s response to the lawyer’s question of who was his neighbor. At the end Jesus asked who the neighbor was in the parable but the lawyer couldn’t bring himself to say the Samaritan. He said the one that showed mercy, which was correct, and Jesus told him to go and do the same. But we could also say from the parable that your neighbor is the person who hates you, your neighbor is the person everyone around you says you should hate, your neighbor is the one with different beliefs from you, your neighbor is every other human. And you should be willing to help your neighbor, take care of your neighbor, give your own money to help your neighbor with no expectation of getting that money back. At the end of the parable the Samaritan gave the innkeeper money to cover the expenses of caring for the robbery victim and said he would pay for any excess when he returned, and with the victim having been robbed there was little chance he would be able to repay the Samaritan.

I’ve long thought this passage is one of the most crucial of Jesus’s teaching, and the majority of people who claim to follow him (or at least the ones who are loudest about it) seem to miss the point entirely and fail to follow the lesson. One can’t embrace being selfish or greedy and be a Christian, it just doesn’t work.