What would the parable of the Good Samaritan look like today?
In the United States, the man lying beside the road may well be dying from an overdose of fentanyl.
Over the course of the pandemic, social isolation combined with a flood of super-potent synthetic fentanyl pushed overdose deaths in the US to unimaginable levels, from 70,000 in 2019 to 107,000 in 2021. Will we, like the Levite and priest in Luke 10:25–37, keep our distance?
Journalist Beth Macy’s book Dopesick chronicled the current opioid crisis, inspiring a widely viewed Hulu miniseries. More recently, in Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis, Macy searches out possibilities of hope amid mounting deaths of despair.
The title of Macy’s book comes from her conversations with Rev. Michelle Mathis, who cofounded Olive Branch Ministry, a faith-based organization in Hickory, North Carolina, devoted to reducing harm and death associated with drug and opioid use. Mathis offers a…
