When Conservative Christian influencers condemn what they call "toxic empathy," it's time to get back to biblical basics and see just what Jesus had to say about compassion for neighbors and strangers in his cornerstone parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37, where he holds up the Samaritan, a figure much reviled by his Jewish audience, as the exemplar of a good neighbor. (To get the full impact of his words today you need to substitute a group especially reviled in rightwing Christian circles like undocumented immigrants, Muslims or Transexuals.) Over the next four weeks, I'll be breaking the text of Christ's story into sections with accompanying illustrations by international artists from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection in hope of giving this often-read moral tale a new meaning. Few artists in my collection have captured what "empathy" looks like so well as Cypriot Artist Charalambos Epaminonda in this acrylic painting from from his triptych of Luke's Parables of Mercy, where we see the Good Samaritan, who resembles Christ, offering help to the Jew attacked by thieves in the Gospel narrative. (John Kohan)