Micaiah
Luke 10:25-37, from the MIV (Micaiah Imaginative Version):
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
But he, desiring to not look like a complete fool after having had his tricky question dismissed in a mere twenty seconds, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”
Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell into the hands of socialists. They demanded from him $800 to register his camel, $270 for a licence to ride his camel, and a sizeable portion of the costs of feeding and watering his camel to pay for the privilege of having a poorly maintained road to ride his camel on. Then they took half his goods to distribute as welfare to those too lazy to do honest work for a living (i.e., themselves).
“Furthermore, they confiscated his sword, staff, letter opener and butter-knife to make him safer for his own good, and then failed to protect him when a more efficiently run group of socialists (who happened to be nearly all men) beat him up, and took what remained of his belongings. The man was grateful to be in the hands of the male socialists, because at least they were honest about their intentions, and after they had had their fill of violence they left him to die alone in peace. His injuries were not so severe that he would have died without medical attention, but while the male socialists were beating him up, the female socialists had assumed control of the medical industry and made it absolutely free, which would have been amazing for our protagonist if the wait time had not immediately after skyrocketed. (And by “free”, I actually mean that they paid for the now over-priced product with the money they stole while on the road.)
“As the man lay on the road waiting to die, an aspiring politician walked by. This politician was so shocked that such a thing could happen in the current year that he immediately formed an alliance with the female socialists, and won an election on the back of promises to help the downtrodden and disenfranchised by stealing more from the productive and giving it to socialist bureaucrats, who would create a welfare system so impossibly convoluted that no actual victims of male socialism would ever have the time and energy to get anything useful out of it. However, before you object to the utter pointlessness of this exercise, the politician did convince a lot of voters that voting for the female socialists was a sure sign that they were good, kind, wise, compassionate and empathetic individuals. Those voters felt really really good about themselves but without actually having to put in the hard work to actually be a good person, and so the self-esteem of the nation was raised, and I’m sure we can agree that that in itself is a good thing.
“Another traveller walked past the man and was appalled by his condition, but not quite appalled enough to get blood on his clean T-shirt. Instead, he gave $25 to a slick-talking charity spokesman self-esteem salesman at the next town, who then used most of that money to send him numerous newsletters and a nice calendar every so often.
“A third traveller passed by. He was a filthy capitalist pig who didn’t pay his fair share, because he was wealthy enough that he could hire an army of lobbyists and lawyers so the female socialists wouldn’t touch him. The male socialists wouldn’t touch him either because he had also hired a number of armed guards. (Also, the highest-ranking female socialists didn’t really want to touch him because without him they would have no-one to demonise at the next election.) The capitalist had compassion on the man, and took him to the nearest inn where, at the expense of his own bank balance, he motivated the innkeeper to nurse the man back to health.
“Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among the socialists?”
“The capitalist,” the lawyer replied.
Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
(Disclaimer: Please note that a number of unconventional translation techniques were used in the development of the MIV. Fidelity to the original manuscripts is not guaranteed.)
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