O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:8).
While attending a legal ethics seminar last Saturday, I surprisingly had the most spiritual moment of my year. A speaker there relayed the story of From Jerusalem to Jericho, an (apparently famous, but I had never heard of it) psychology study from 1973. (A more readable journalistic summary is here.) The authors specialized in research regarding what conditions prompt bystanders to help ailing strangers, rather than to ignore them.
The set-up was simple. At Princeton Theological Seminary, 40 theology students were assigned to prepare lectures as part of a final exam. The exam occurred in a tight time frame: in 15-minute increments, instructors told individual students they needed to either leisurely wend their way across campus, or rush across campus, in order to make it to the building where their graded lecture would be recorded. Half of the students were specifically assigned to speak on the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
But the lecture wasn’t the real test. The real test was that as they darted across campus, each student would encounter a sick and distressed man, lying in their path.
Only ten percent of the students who had been told to “hurry” stopped to help. One student, in his rush, literally stepped over the suffering man without acknowledging his existence. (To be fair: 63% of the students who were told they had plenty of time to get across campus did stop and offer help.) Interestingly, there was no statistical difference between those students speaking on the Good Samaritan, and those speaking on other topics.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this study. These were seminarians. Literally people who had chosen to dedicate their entire life’s study and vocation to Christ. Literally people who had spent the last several hours studying one of Christianity’s greatest parables. And still, they were so human, so inherently selfish, so subject to the never-ending pressures of manufactured urgency and all-important grades, that they couldn’t be bothered to stop to help.
I wince at how much that description applies to me. My frenetic work schedule, my church attendance, my side hobby of reading religious works — what does any of it matter, if I can’t spare time to be kind? If I don’t even notice the suffering around me?
Suddenly, Christ’s instructions to “preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord” (Mosiah 18:20) seem so wise. We don’t need anything else. Two painstakingly simple commandments – love God, love your neighbor (Matthew 22:37-39) – are hard enough. As individuals, churches, and communities, I now believe we should have only one goal: to narrow this “Good Samaritan” gap between Christian belief and Christian action.