What if the people we’ve been taught to avoid are the very people Jesus is asking us to see differently?

In The One and Only, we revisit the story of the Good Samaritan — not simply as a lesson in kindness, but as a challenge to the assumptions, fears and inherited narratives that shape how we see other people.

The tension between Jews and Samaritans ran deep. History, religion, culture and prejudice had created generations of distance between them. So when Jesus makes a Samaritan the hero of the story, He is doing far more than teaching people to help someone in need. He is confronting the labels they had learned to trust.

The priest and Levite had reasons for passing by. Their concerns about ritual purity were rooted in real religious expectations. But Jesus exposes what can happen when our fear of getting something wrong becomes more important than the person lying in front of us.

And that challenge reaches far beyond one ancient road.

What assumptions have we inherited about people who are different from us? What stories have we been told about race, faith, sexuality, age, culture or background that prevent us from seeing someone as our neighbour? Jesus invites us to break those narratives rather than remain gridlocked by them.

But there is another layer to the story.

Jesus is not only telling us to become good Samaritans. He is our ultimate Good Samaritan — the One who came towards us, made Himself vulnerable, gave everything He had and paid the cost so that we could live.

The question is whether He will remain the one and only.

Or whether we will follow His example.

Who is my neighbour? Who have I learned to avoid? And what would it look like to love them like Jesus does?