a samaritan story

Very early this morning in New York City a homeless Guatemalan immigrant saw a man and woman fighting, so he stepped in to help the woman. As she fled the scene the man who had been fighting with the woman turned his knife on the homeless man, stabbed him several times, and fled the scene. In a narrative that sounds like a carbon copy of The Good Samaritan without the happy ending, several people passed by the man, including several who got close enough to see his blood from the stab wound, but few took steps to help. The man died before someone called the police and hung around long enough to verify that the police found him.

My first reaction is probably like a lot of people's, one of disgust. How could so many people walk by the homeless man on the street as he died? I have asked this same sort of question before, though, and in both situations I came to the same uncomfortable conclusion. While it may be convenient to blame others and say that we would be different and heroic if placed in the same spot, when something like this happens and so many people behave in the wrong way I have to chalk the behavior up to human nature and leave it to hope that I would actually do what was right.

Imagine the scene for a moment. It's six in the morning and it's a cold April morning. You're walking to work and running a little late, or you're walking to Starbucks for your morning joe, or you're trying to squeeze in a quick jog before the day starts. Regardless, when you reach the crumpled body of the homeless man you do not want to find something that is going to make you have to stop and wait in the cold for the police, so you rationalize. "He probably got into a drunken fight," you think. "He deserved what he got. He'll wake up in a couple of hours and shake it off. Best not check his health because if he comes to it's going to be awkward." That may not be exactly what goes through everyone's head because different things drive different people, but I'd bet some variation of that rationalization was used several times this morning.

This leads to my main three points. First, human nature is pervasive and it is not good. This can be disguised because society is typically structured in a way so that many of the behaviors that we consider good are rewarded. This just means that society restructures selfishness to be more palatable to others. This is not to say that people can't behave in good ways. It's just in our nature to be selfish.

Second, building on my first point, there is no room for righteous indignation here. Only one man has ever walked the earth blameless enough to be righteously indignant. The rest of us have it in our nature to do the things we want to be indignant about.

Third, being a good Samaritan sounds obvious and easy in Sunday School or ethics class, but in practice it costs something. It could have been that someone who did not want to lose his or her job for showing up late to work would have otherwise stopped. It could be that people put a lot of value in just not getting involved and dealing with the hassle of being a witness to a crime after the fact, so they didn't get involved. It could be that people were scared that they would be attacked as well if they stopped to help. I can think of numerous reasons why stopping would have cost something, but the costs did not change the fact that stopping to help was the right thing to do.

Jesus told the Good Samaritan story as an illustration of what loving one's neighbor really means. The person unwilling to incur costs does not love.