Parable of the Good "Illegal Immigrant"
If told today the Parable of the Good Samaritan would feature "illegal immigrants", trans people and other outgroups.
Hi everyone, have been quiet on the blogging front lately. I’ve been focused on a side project for the past few months.
The scapegoating of outgroups – “illegal immigrants”, trans people, Muslims, others – has been frustrating. So I made a comic about it. Kickstarter link is here, please sign up and follow along. We’ll either recoup our costs, or this will be one of the world’s weirdest midlife crisis projects…! 😅
I’m not religious, but I know my way around the New Testament, and the hero of Jesus’ most famous parable – the Parable of the Good Samaritan – was part of a scorned outgroup.
Some 2SLGBTQIA+ friendly clergy friends liked my idea of modernizing the parable using today’s scorned outgroups, and agreed to help. I found a wonderful artist, and we’ve now completed our Parable of the Good “Illegal Immigrant” comic.
In it, ethnically-accurate Jesus and a young girl visualize an undocumented migrant, a trans woman, someone suffering from substance abuse, a niqab (veil) wearing Muslim and a black Christian, all helping a person in need. More details at:
It’s a long way from energy and fuel cells. But then, there’s more to a healthy society than just energy and fuel cells.
In addition to positive feedback from individual congregations, immigration-focused faith groups in Canada plan to use it as a handout, a national queer community support organization has asked for copies, a Burnaby interfaith group has been enthusiastically supportive, and one of the endorsements comes from a white church so progressive they invited Martin Luther King Jr. to give a guest sermon in 1961 – two years before “I have a dream”.
Full credit to my clergy friends for helping this atheist’s brainstorm resonate.
I’d love if we could fundraise enough to modernize a second parable – about an arrogant, government-connected oligarch and the whistleblower who refused to make him richer. So once again, please consider signing up for the Kickstarter! 😊 And forward the link to friends. The Golden Rule is universal, and we will all benefit when society moves past blaming outgroups.
Energy musings and fuel cell memories will resume soon.
