New series: Bible Stories You Thought You Knew (BSYTYK)
Why This Series Exists
If you’ve been in church for any length of time, you’ve heard certain Bible stories so often that you could almost recite them in your sleep. The Good Samaritan. David and Goliath. Jonah and the Whale. The Widow’s Mite.
The problem is… the version most of us know isn’t the one the original audience heard.
Over time, many of these stories have been softened to make them safe, bent to serve modern agendas, or trimmed down until the offense is gone.
What was once a blazing prophetic rebuke has often been reduced to a moral children’s tale.
This series exists to tear the varnish off—to put each story back in its historical, linguistic, and covenant context so that it hits with the same force it had on Day One.
Some messages will sting. Some may hit nerves you didn’t know you had. But the goal is always the same: to let God’s Word speak without our edits.
How to Spot a Series Entry
- Each message in this series will carry the (BSYTYK) banner at the top.
- Not every message I post will be in this series, but when you see that banner, you’ll know we’re taking on a passage that’s been so often preached, yet so often preached wrong.
- Every series entry will follow the Forge structure to unpack the passage, expose the distortion, and restore its original force.
- This series includes a new, but temporary, section (💉 Softening Exposure) that will show how modern churches tend to teach, twist, dilute, or just soften the story.
The Ground Rules
- I’m not here to be “edgy for the sake of edgy.” The aim is faithfulness, not shock value. Call me out if I’m not being faithful or if I’m wrong.
- The Bible doesn’t need me to defend it—it needs me to get out of its way.
- If the true meaning of a passage makes us uncomfortable, that’s probably a sign we’ve finally heard it as it was meant to be heard.
Buckle up.
Some of these stories may never sound the same to you again—because that’s exactly the point.
(BSYTYK)
⚓ Floatie: The One Who Showed Him Mercy
Luke 10:36–37 (36)Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” (37)He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”(ESV)
The lawyer couldn’t even bring himself to say “Samaritan.” That’s how deep the hatred ran — and Jesus made him choke on his own pride.
✒️ Forge: The Most Offensive Hero Possible
To us, “Good Samaritan” sounds like “good neighbor.” To a first-century Jew, it was an oxymoron — like “holy traitor” or “faithful heretic.”
For centuries, Jews and Samaritans had been locked in generational hatred:
- Samaritans claimed to follow Yahweh but rejected Jerusalem’s temple and most of the Scriptures.
- They were considered covenant-breakers, false worshipers, and ethnically compromised.
- You avoided their land, refused their bread, and didn’t say their name unless you had to.
They were the last people you’d make the hero of a Jewish moral story. Which is exactly why Jesus did it. When Jesus told this parable, He didn’t slip the Samaritan in quietly. He made him the hero — and made the priest and Levite, the holy men, into the ones who failed the Law.
This wasn’t accidental.
It was a direct public insult to self-righteous religion.
⚒️ Anvil: Why Your Enemy Might Obey God Better Than You
What if the person you consider furthest from God is actually living His command better than you?
If Jesus told this story today, it might sound like this:
- “The faithful elder walked by… the seminary professor crossed the street… but the undocumented immigrant stopped.”
- “…but the Muslim woman in a hijab stayed with him through the night.”
- “…but the gay man from the pride parade carried him to safety.”
If that makes you tighten up inside — if you start listing reasons why they could never be the hero — that’s exactly how it felt to hear “Samaritan” in Jesus’ day.
Jesus’ point wasn’t “help strangers.” It was: your enemy may be living out the heart of God’s law better than you are.
And if that’s true, you need to repent.
💉 Softening Exposure: How “Be Nice” Replaced the Rebuke
Modern pulpits have turned this into a children’s story about being nice to strangers.
They strip out the racial slur. They erase the centuries of blood feud.
They skip over the fact that the “good guys” in the story are the ones who failed.
Why? Because the real version forces the church to admit that outsiders, political opponents, or doctrinal rivals may sometimes obey God more faithfully than we do.
And that’s a truth that would make people squirm in their seats — and maybe stop giving.
So the parable is reduced to a moral pep talk: “Help people when they’re hurting.”
The rebuke is gone. The offense is gone.
And the King’s words are tamed for mass consumption.
When you sanitize a parable, you also sanitize the repentance it was meant to produce.
🔥 Ember: Mercy Is the True Measure
The priest and the Levite had the Law memorized.
The Samaritan lived it.
He crossed the road, bound wounds, poured out his own resources, and stayed until the need was met.
This is how the Kingdom measures righteousness: Not by clean hands, not by perfect theology, but by whether you will love someone who would never love you back.
If you only love those who love you back, you don’t look like Jesus — you look like everyone else.
🌿 Covenant Triumph: Go and Do Likewise
Jesus ends the story with a command, not a suggestion: “You go, and do likewise.”
Because in God’s Kingdom, mercy outranks tribal loyalty.
Love outranks ritual purity. And obedience outranks reputation.
The Samaritan wasn’t the exception. He was the standard.
And if that offends you, then Jesus has found the place you need to repent.
[⚓ Floatie] [✒️ Forge] [⚒️ Anvil] [🔥 Ember] [🌿 Covenant Triumph]
This post follows the Forge Baseline Rule—layered truth for the discerning remnant.
Walking With Christ 
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