Tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, Samaritans, Romans, widows, the conscripted mile, and the Canaanite woman: what each one meant in Galilee, who plays each part in America now, and who plays it for you.
Let’s parameterize Jesus in the spirit of “I can tolerate anyone but the outgroup.”
Let’s take tax collectors, prostitutes, and lepers. And maybe another group or three. Samaritans? Widows? Roman soldier whose gear to carry an extra mile? All the classic “Jesus loved even the xyz?! Said to be kind to the abc?!”
What did each of those groups represent to an ancient person in Galilee etc? E.g. tax collector maybe represents oppressor, or iirc they were Jews who kinda sold out to the Romans? So traitors?
And what about the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:21–28? The one whom even Jesus would initially turn away?
Now take a bunch of current groups, let’s say in America for now. For each of those groups, point at their different outgroups as parameterized by those dimensions. Assume they’re kind of archetypal in some ways. Have fun :)
— Malcolm, to Claude. What follows is what came back, argued with and revised.
It turns out they’re at least eight different psychological-relational mechanisms. “Love your enemies” is eight different asks.
Jesus taught only in parables but we have so much more technology today 😉
Why a few churches among the tribes? I’m thinking about who would be receptive to Jesus’ teachings here, in a sense. Each row is an audience for the parable. These are archetypes, not census data: hold them loosely and argue with them.
A guided walk through each mechanism, for your own tribe. Your answers stay in this browser; nothing is sent anywhere.
Paste this into an LLM that knows you (one with memory works best) and let it guess your eight.
Patterns that only showed up once the grid was filled in. (Worth doing your own eight first.)
This doesn’t perchance map onto the seven sins, does it? Don’t force it lolll
This page is about the sinners. Its companion, Parameterizing the righteous, is about the other half of the sentence: the Pharisee, the elder brother, the early birds in the vineyard, Jonah, and the stories Jesus aimed at the people already doing it right.