Send Lazarus to my Fathers House
I n the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus, the rich man, suffering in hell, asks Father Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house to warn his five brothers to save them from hell. His attempt, though not the core teaching of the parable, reveals a general truth, i.e., when a grievous thing strikes us, our natural instinct is to warn others, especially our loved ones, so that they would not suffer the same fate. For one thing, the culture of the rich man — different from ours — tends to encourage such an effort. In that culture, a person does not exist as an independent entity, but as part of a larger group. Within the framework of a shared identity, social obligation always preempts the individual’s self-interests. In the case of the rich man, he is obligated to alert his brothers of an impending terrifying doom. He does so without obsessing with the possibility of being belittled as to why he has landed in the awful spot in the first place. For him, social obligation offsets how...