Peculiar Peoples
Why We Need Each Other
It occurred to me recently that I’ve been reading the story of the Good Samaritan all wrong.
It started in Sunday school. I’ll admit it: My mind was wandering. Thinking about the prescription I’d forgotten to pick up and wondering if we had enough milk in the fridge to last us until grocery day. Though the teacher was fantastic, it was just one of those Sundays where the week feels like it’s already clinging to your leg. I had just made a mental note to buy more toilet paper when my ears perked up. “. . . we were in Los Angeles . . .” someone was saying.
I don’t recall the whole comment or even what prompted the ward member to speak up. But I do remember their next words. “. . . you know,” they said, “the literal Sodom and Gomorrah.”
I think I actually heard a record scratch in my head. I’d heard people refer to other cities before as “Babylon,” or “the great and spacious building”—those hotbeds of moral turpitude, like Las Vegas or New Orleans during Mardi Gras. But Los Angeles? I love Los Angeles.
I grew up in a suburb just thirty minutes outside the city. I have so many memories of trips to museums and theaters. Buying street food on Olvera Street. Twice a year, my mom checked me out of school early to attend the Los Angeles Temple with our youth group. We got burgers and shakes at the In-N-Out in Westwood afterwards.
I do recognize that my childhood experience was protected and limited. But lately I’ve been learning more about the city as I prepare to write a life history of my late Uncle Steve. Steve moved to the Los Angeles area right out of law school with dreams of becoming a screenwriter or producer. He wanted to be part of “the industry.” He never did get his big break, but Steve fell in love with the city. And he shared that love with me. He took me to sing-alongs at the Chinese Theater and performances at the Hollywood Bowl. Baseball games for Dodger Dogs and Falafel King for fresh pita and babaganoush. He radiated love for that city, for its life and history—and most of all, for the people. Steve never married or had any children of his own, but he dedicated his life to the people of Los Angeles. It was his home and his family.
The disconnect between my experience and this Sunday school comment made me curious. What was it about Los Angeles that lumped it in with Sodom and Gomorrah? Was it the movie industry? The politics? The diverse sexual identities and preferences of the people who lived there? Or maybe the large immigrant population? And what made them so different from us, sitting in our padded chairs in suburbia? We weren’t perfect, either. Why were our sins forgivable while theirs deserved total destruction? And weren’t we all brothers and sisters, anyway? Shouldn’t we be overlooking our differences and coming together as one?
“Tribalism” has become something of a buzzword, shorthand for the toxic divisiveness that seems to be pervasive these days. A villain that screams about our differences to make us forget our similarities. Lately, the favored culprit of this divisiveness is political tribalism, but other identity markers have also been used to separate people into groups. In 2022, President Russell M. Nelson warned against this kind of behavior, saying, “Labels … divide and restrict the way we think about ourselves and each other. … Labels can lead to judging and animosity. Any abuse or prejudice toward another because of nationality, race, sexual orientation, gender, educational degrees, culture, or other significant identifiers is offensive to our Maker!”
I agree with President Nelson. Abuse and prejudice should never be tolerated.
After my Sunday school experience, I spent months trying to understand the psychology and sociology of tribalism. As part of that process, I reread the story of the Good Samaritan. I’ve always read this story as an example of the evils of tribalism. When Christ tells the lawyer that the Samaritan is his neighbor, he is clearly admonishing the lawyer for his exclusionary behaviors, and telling him that he needs to shape up and love everyone, regardless of their religion or nationality. This reading isn’t a bad one. It’s how my kids are learning the parable, too. After reading the parable through the lens of sociology, though, I believe that the story of the Good Samaritan also acknowledges the ways in which, paradoxically, tribalism is actually an important and beneficial part of our lives, both as individuals and as a society. And while labels and categories can sometimes result in divisiveness, the story of the Good Samaritan demonstrates that a possible solution to this divisiveness might just be more tribalism.
When the lawyer approached Christ with his question, “Who is my neighbor?” he did so looking for justification. He wanted to be told to serve the people in his town or his family or his ward or his book group or his cheese-of-the-month club. The people he already knew and understood.
It’s a reasonable desire. We’ve evolved to use groups and categories to help us navigate the world. The very foundations on which tribalism is built—sorting, organizing, and classifying—are all basic milestones of childhood development. In experiments, babies as young as six months old recognized when they were looking at a picture of an adult who had a different skin color from their regular caretaker. And at around thirty-six months of age, children develop the ability to group items—and people—based on likeness.
Labels, groups, and categories help society by providing us with cues and scripts with which we can navigate social situations with friends and strangers alike. But they also help us individually by creating a place for us to belong. We all crave belonging, to feel as if we understand and are understood by the world around us. “That is the sense of being among our kind,” explains science journalist David Berreby. “It’s that absence of self-consciousness, that ease and fellowship and sense of common values which make for intimacy and sanity, and the quick give and take of familiar intercourse.”
However, one of the many paradoxes of tribalism is that the most compelling groups to belong to are the ones that feed both our need to belong and our need to feel distinct from other groups. According to psychologists Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel, “The power of a social identity comes from what it excludes—which helps people clarify who they are and who they are not.”
Christ begins his parable by talking about “A certain man.” No other identifiers are given, but since the man is traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, we can guess that the man is probably Jewish. Regardless, because the character is left without a description, the story’s audience (the Jewish lawyer) would be invited to see himself and his characteristics in this “certain man.”
The certain man is attacked and left for dead. The first person to pass by is a priest, one set apart to serve in the temple. The second is a Levite, another Jew. Neither stops to help the certain man. Christ offers no reason for their negligence. They could have been pressed for time or worried about their own safety. But the labels that Christ uses in the story hint at their possible motivation.
The priest and the Levite both followed the Law of Moses, which designated dead bodies and anyone who touched them as unclean. Although the priest would have followed a stricter code than the Levite, both men had strong incentives to leave the certain man untouched. They both belonged to exclusive groups with exacting rules. If either man approached a dead body, he risked his own sense of social belonging within his religious group.
This explanation does not excuse their behavior, of course. The Law of Moses made exceptions so that abandoned bodies could be cared for and provided ways to become clean again after doing so. But it does speak to the intense sway that tribalism can have on our lives and our choices. The feeling of exclusion from a group can have an actual negative effect on one’s physical and mental health. Berreby writes that “a sense of being Them, a non-recognized nonparty of human community, pushes your mind and body toward jumbled thinking, anger and sadness, and a shorter life span.” It’s easy for us to judge these two characters, to say, “Why didn’t you stop and help the certain man? He was one of your kind. You were the same.” But in actuality, these two people would have felt the strongest loyalty to the group that they worked the hardest to become a part of—the group that expected the most from them and helped them best understand who they are and who they are not.
Who are these people? A priest and a Levite.
Who are they not? People who deal with unclean things.
Luckily, these two passersby are not the only travelers on the road that day. When the Samaritan sees the certain man lying injured on the side of the road, he offers care in a way that the two Jewish men did not. After listening to Christ’s story, the Jewish lawyer is then forced to admit that the Samaritan—a member of a group that fought against his own Jewish people, a group that maintained a heated opposition in political and religious viewpoints—was the only neighborly character in the bunch.
This is where the story becomes interesting to me. Christ could have told a story about a poor Samaritan, injured and left to die by the road, and a Jew who found and helped him. This would have just as easily demonstrated a message of tolerance and acceptance. The lawyer could have even imagined himself in the Jewish helper role, offering love and physical salvation to the wounded Samaritan.
But Christ didn’t tell that story. In Christ’s parable, a Jewish man is injured, and the Samaritan is the one who offers help.
Sometimes in the Church we like to think of ourselves as special or different. I remember learning very early that we are a peculiar people. We are blessed with knowledge, while “the World” sits in darkness. They need us to bring them the truth, to help them change their ways. We are the ones who have something to offer Them. But when I read Christ’s story of the Good Samaritan, I see something different. I see the importance of an outsider perspective. I see an other who has something to give. Maybe we aren’t the only peculiar people. Maybe heaven and earth are both populated by scores of peculiar peoples, each treasured by God, each with special callings that have been informed by their talents, skills, and cultures.
Tribalism is important because it creates Us. It gives us places to feel that irreplaceable sense of belonging. But another paradox of tribalism is that it is just as important because it creates Them. The true lesson of the Good Samaritan story is that They exist not to just be tolerated until They change into Us. They exist separate from Us, and we need them, just as they are.
Of course, it can be difficult to accept people for their differences—especially when those differences feel like an affront to our beliefs or lifestyle. Once we’ve decided that someone’s beliefs or behavior are wrong or bad, our brain does whatever gymnastics necessary to avoid being classed alongside that person. “The fear of being one of Them pushes against your frequent perception of sameness. Difference is all you may permit yourself to see.”
Tribalism can brew fear and anger in society. Just like the lawyer, we can be angry with groups of people when their political or religious beliefs stand in opposition to our own. Like the priest and the Levite, we can be afraid that reaching outside of our comfort zone will result in the loss of our chosen communities. When people focus on fear and anger—that is when tribalism becomes a tool of abuse and prejudice. And in these cases, both individuals and society are damaged, causing us to miss out on the ways that differences can bring strength to our lives and our communities.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Consider the Samaritan. In the context of the parable, Samaritans hated Jews just as much as Jews hated Samaritans. So why did he stop to help the Jewish man on the side of the road? He could have left the certain man there to die, and when he returned home, he’d have a story that could strengthen his ties in his own society. “I saw a Jewish man, beaten, on the side of the road. Serves him right for worshiping the wrong way/voting for the wrong person/wearing the wrong clothes/making the wrong life choices.” And the other men at the table would nod in agreement, and the not-so-good Samaritan would have felt a strong sense of belonging with people who understood him.
When the Samaritan looked at the certain man, though, he must have felt a pull to help, a sense of sameness and connection with the broken man on the side of the road. What was it that he saw? Perhaps they were both merchants. Maybe the Samaritan imagined the certain man to be a father like himself. Seeing the injured man could have reminded the Samaritan of the time he was gravely injured on a different route, and of the man who stopped to help him. Or maybe the certain man had a softness in his gaze or an angle of his jaw that reminded the Samaritan of a brother or cousin or teacher.
That’s another beautiful paradox of tribalism: although it has real, measurable effects in our lives, the divisions we create are all in our heads. Race, religion, nationality, sexuality, gender, profession, education, hair color, music preferences, astrology signs—if we are looking for differences, we will see differences. But if we instead focus our efforts on finding connections, we can turn tribalism into a tool for good.
My Uncle Steve was the best example of this kind of tribalism. He served the people of Los Angeles, yes, but he also saw the many ways that the diversity of the community enriched his own life. He sought out ways to build relationships with people who were different from him, going so far as to learn new languages in the process. He attended different religious services with his friends, held an annual Passover Seder with his Jewish best friend, and organized activities to encourage a sense of unity between the Spanish- and English-speaking wards in the stake. He loved people where they stood, for their similarities and for their differences.
Steve passed away in 2020. In a final show of devotion to the city he loved, his ashes were interred at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. A year later, my family traveled back to Los Angeles for his memorial service. It was a lovely service, with members of his ward family, members of his blood family, and his dearest friends in attendance. We presented musical numbers and shared our memories. As I looked around the chapel, I saw Church members and non-members, people from Los Angeles, people from Utah, people from other countries. Different races, cultures, political stances, and sexual orientations were represented in the room. Our differences were our strengths as we came together to offer what we had in memory of Steve. In that moment, in all of our beautiful differences, we became Us.
This essay and the essays below appeared in issue 6.
Jeanine Bee is a Pushcart Prize–nominated writer and the fiction editor for Wayfare. Her writing (fiction and non-fiction) has been featured in places such as Fourth Genre, Exponent II, Inscape, and Dialogue. She lives in Utah with her husband and four kids.
Art by Emma Taylor.
