where have all the good samaritans gone?

i was talking to chaundra about this article (the impassive bystander - someone is hurt, in need of compassion. is it human instinct to do nothing?) from the washington post last week.

it's utterly disturbing, not just what it says, but what it shows (in the two video clips) and the implications of the bystander effect as explained by sociologists and psychologists.

...i suppose this shouldn't surprise me in our day and age, but this is downright disturbing (especially the video of the woman at the hospital, but equally the guy in connecticut being run down)...where have all the good samaritans gone? does fear and distraction dominate our lives so much...where is the gut-wrenching compassion of Jesus followers in all this? has our current living so fueled us with fear that we cannot act?

well, that's what chaundra thinks:

"Where are the good Samaritans?

We're afraid. Thanks to the media, we fear everyone.

We're self centered. We would stop but we just don't have time. Someone else will.

We've taken this whole rugged individual, consumer thing too far. Trouble is, I am just as bad as the next person. I would love to stop and help the homeless person, but first must consider the safety of my children and my possessions (to a lesser extent but still there, if I am honest). It makes me think that we, as parents, need to seriously consider how we purposefully sow into our childrens' lives an attitude of selflessness. How do we model? That means more than any words we can speak. It needs to be something they can see or experience. It's wonderful that you are doing the human trafficking thing, but to the kids; it's just something you do at meetings with grown ups and on the computer. It doesn't impact them very much. (Not that I am picking on that)"

...truly i agree with chaundra...what she's talking about here is the "d-word" [discipleship]

in the post story it claims this phenomenon as the 'bystander effect":

"Sociologists and psychologists have long studied what is known as bystander behavior. They say people are often unsure how to react to such events because they have difficulty processing what they are seeing. Witnesses to tragedy, especially when events are uncertain, often look around first. If no one else is moving, individuals have a tendency to mimic the unmoving crowd. Although we might think otherwise, most of us would not have behaved much differently from the people we see in these recent videos, experts say. Deep inside, we are herd animals, conformists. We care deeply what other people are doing and what they think of us. The classic story of conformist behavior can be found in the 1964 case of Kitty Genovese, the 28-year-old bar manager who was slain by a man who raped and stabbed her for about half an hour as neighbors in a New York neighborhood looked on. No one opened a door for her. No one ran into the street to intervene."

...to me, this seems like a discipleship issue. are we encouraging and training followers of Christ to be and act like Him?
if we aren't then we are running with the wrong herd!


Lord, please help us to have and show compassion like You...please make us Your herd...give us Your grace and craft us into Your disciples

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them--yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
1 corinthians 15:10