Where are the Good Samaritans

Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 26, 2010

I turned on the news this morning as I was waiting for something on my computer to finish running. In that news broadcast, I saw a very short news article and I was reminded of something that I witnessed when I was a little kid that has disturbed me since. In New York City, there was a homeless man who helped a woman who was being attacked and ended up getting stabbed. He laid on the sidewalk for over an hour while 20 people walked by him. A couple people looked at him, turned him over, talked about it, and then left. Someone else took a picture on their cell phone. By the time the fire department showed up an hour and twenty minutes later, he had bled out and died. From Fox News:

What I was reminded of when I was young was a trip that my family took to the Big Apple around Christmas time. As we were on our bus, we had come to a stop. I looked out the window and saw a sight that I could not completely understand. However, the image still is haunting. A man was on the sidewalk, leaning against a fence. One hand was up holding on to the fence and the other was down at his side. A river of red ran from his wrist that was down, across the sidewalk, and into the street. Person after person walked by. Some stopped and kicked his feet to see if he was alive and then continued on their way. Nobody seemed to care.

The story that Jesus told two thousand years ago is still as relevant as it was back then. More people walk by, not wanting to concern themselves with the problems of other people, than those that will stop <by a disturbing margin>. It was the homeless person, the person that society looks down upon, that tried to help someone else.  How sick is this culture that we live in?