The Digital Neighbor
“Neighbor” in the Digital Age: What the Good Samaritan Teaches Us Online
The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was notoriously dangerous, a place of ambush and risk. Today, we travel a different kind of road: a digital one, paved with algorithms and pixels. This road, too, is often a place of conflict. In comment sections, social media threads, and online forums, we can find people who are wounded, robbed of their dignity, and left on the side of the road for dead.
In this landscape, the ancient question posed to Jesus in the Gospel of Luke has never been more relevant: “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus’s answer, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, is a story we know well. A man is beaten, robbed, and left half-dead. A priest and a Levite—respected religious leaders—see him and cross to the other side of the road. It is a Samaritan, a member of a despised and doctrinally different group, who stops. He is moved with pity, bandages the man’s wounds, puts him on his own animal, takes him to an inn, and cares for him.
How does this ancient story speak to our modern, digital lives?
First, we must learn to see the wounded. A person being “dogpiled” with hateful comments for expressing an unpopular opinion is a wounded traveler. The teenager being cyberbullied is a wounded traveler. The person asking honest, searching questions about their faith, only to be attacked for their doubt, is a wounded traveler. They have been stripped of their dignity and left vulnerable on the public road.
Second, we must confront our own tendency to “cross to the other side.” How often do we scroll past a toxic comment thread, thinking, “I don’t want to get involved”? That is the logic of the priest and the Levite. They likely had good reasons. Perhaps they were busy, or perhaps they feared becoming ritually impure by touching a corpse. We also have our reasons. We fear being targeted ourselves, we don’t have the energy for a fight, or we disagree with the person being attacked and feel they "had it coming." In that moment, we are choosing our own comfort and safety over the call to be a neighbor.
So, what does it look like to be a Good Samaritan online?
It means showing compassion. The Samaritan was “moved with pity.” Our first response should be empathy, not judgment. We must see the person behind the avatar, a person made in the image of God who is hurting.
It means binding the wounds. This might be as simple as leaving a kind, supportive comment. It could be sending a private message to someone being attacked, letting them know they aren’t alone. Sometimes, it means publicly speaking up, not to win an argument, but to defend the dignity of the person being dehumanized. This is the digital equivalent of pouring on oil and wine.
It means taking them to the “inn.” This is the act of moving the person toward a safer space. It might mean reporting abusive comments, blocking trolls, or simply changing the subject to de-escalate a conversation that has become destructive.
Jesus flips the original question on its head. He doesn't answer, "Who is your neighbor?" Instead, he asks, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor?” The call is not to define who is worthy of our help, but to become a person who helps.
Our neighbor is the person right in front of us, even if they are only in front of us on a screen. Our neighbor is the one we have the opportunity to show mercy to. On the digital roads we travel every day, may we not be the ones who pass by on the other side.