What is only good judgment and common sense as applied to children is also good judgment and common sense, and good Christianity, in accordance with the teachings of both Jesus and St. Paul, as applied to certain peoples where the majority are so untrained or incapable that they cannot judge. It is not at all a question of social status. The extreme radical change that Jesus made was in that field. Jesus taught that there were no people born better than others, or in a ruling class, who could remove responsibility from any individual for deciding his own beliefs and determining his own actions. On the other hand, there is no reason for thinking that Jesus in any particular fostered the doctrine that any individual or small group of whatever degree of immaturity of judgment should under all circumstances be allowed to determine their own acts or their own form of government, and especially to control their relations with other peoples.
A second limitation upon the privilege of self-determination is, of course, the rights and the welfare of others. While we are to decide our own actions in accordance with the spirit of Jesus, we should impose upon ourselves the limitation that we will not act contrary to the interests of others or contrary to the welfare of the community, and this same principle would properly apply in any democratic community or state. While it is right for them to seek their own development, people should avoid injury to other peoples or races, and resistance to such injury is justified. Jesus did not hesitate to denounce the Pharisees for their unjust treatment of others, nor to expel forcibly from the Temple those who were desecrating its precincts to the detriment of the faithful.
I have heard the parable of the Good Samaritan cited by extreme pacifists as an argument against all war, and have heard Jesus characterized as "The Great Pacifist." In addition to the present parable, I have sometimes wished that he could have left us another in which he depicted the scene a little earlier, just at the time when the wayfarer was struggling in the hands of the robbers. The priest might well have shrunk from a contest. Pleading to himself that it would ill become one of his cloth to be involved in a wayside brawl, he would pass by on the other side. The Levite, too, arguing to his conscience that the victim was a stranger to whom he was under no obligation, and that, at any rate, the robbers were too many, would pass by on the other side. But the Good Samaritan, seeing only a neighbor--though a total stranger--in dire distress at the hands of scoundrels, would hurl himself like a bolt into the fray. And if, after deadly conflict, he too lay robbed, bleeding, and sore by his neighbor's side, there would be no glimmer of regret in his heart; but as each helped the other to bind up his wounds, their hearts would rejoice that each had found a friend in a good fight for the right.