Concern for Self
Let's face it — we're spoiled. We simply don't care anymore. We rarely find a person who truly cares about what happens to other people. Oh, sure, there are always the tears of outrage or futility when seeing some particularly nauseating view of human suffering, like the thousands of little emaciated children, with their grotesque, swollen stomachs the testimony to their advanced stage of starvation — but let's face it, these are not the problems that really excite people.
But racial, social, economic injustices — any cause, it seems, which succeeds in involving itself with ME, and with MY environment — with what happens to ME, these are the problems that excite people. The cry is "Yeah, but what about ME?" today, with very little obvious concern for the other fellow. None of this is to say the social injustices (where they are real) are good, or that they should remain. It is to say, rather, that we have a very obvious lack of proper priority!
Self is the dominating force in each human being. Self-seeking — concern for the immediate person — is the strongest natural motivation. Only a truly mature, deeply concerned and enlightened humanitarian can rise above self, and become at least AS concerned about fellowman as self. Even Jesus knew it is utterly impossible for humans to love others MORE than self, and so commanded man to love his neighbor "As himself." Let's admit that's loving your neighbor (and Jesus defined 'neighbor' as any fellow human of whatever race or nation) a great deal!
It would be a wonderful world if humans really did love each other AS themselves. But there exist no laws to force one man to so love another human being. At least, there are no generally recognized laws which carry harsh penalties for denying help to a victim of a crime, even though we may feel there should be.
A man may appear a coward to his friends for having drawn back from helping rescue a drowning person. A relative may be censured by the family for having slammed the door in the face of a terribly injured neighbor — but there are no possible consequences under the law, unless, in some extreme case, a bereaved loved one attempted to bring suit resulting from some obvious neglect of the most basic human actions — alleging criminal intent to abet bodily harm.
And yet, there are such laws — whether we recognize them or not.
Obviously, the people blithely going their way on a "Palm Sunday" were no more active, practicing Christians than, say, a defrocked monk calling on the gods of chance for a seven in a floating crap game!
We can all indignantly censure them. And we can all wonder whether we, seeing the same unconscious and injured man, would have been quick to stop, quick to offer aid.
Laws for Human Conduct
There are laws which carry penalties, believe it or not, for infraction — laws which REQUIRE one human being to be deeply concerned for another — to offer aid — to bear another man's burden.
These are the "least" of the commandments placed before each man —commandments each person must CHOOSE to obey, or disobey.
Whether you recognize the existence of a Higher Power — God — or not, God does exist! He has set living, vital laws in motion; not only the laws of physics and chemistry, but laws regulating human conduct, laws of decent and humane treatment of, and consideration for, fellowman.
Those laws are no more casual suggestions than is it a "suggestion" you remain affixed to good earthly soil by gravity. God has never made any special point in your private life of requiring you to sleep a few hours each night.
Still — you obey.
You don't consciously, deliberately, after a moral struggle, come to such a marvelous choice. You merely do that which is necessary — so long as it's YOU that benefits.
But try the same principles on for size when it comes to another human being — whether your hair hangs over your collar, and you are known to frequently leer at the "establishment" and sneer "peace," or not.
Do you literally jump at the chance to aid, to serve, to help, to offer comfort and cheer to a fellow human?
Come, now — be honest. At least, since no one is listening as your own private mind reads these words — be honest with yourself. It's much, MUCH easier to become angry, and to "put down" a fellow human who looks askance at your manners and dress — and far more appealing, for that matter, to join the field of intellectual battle, than to be found squatting ignominiously beside a muddy curb, helping in some small way an injured man with Jack Daniels on his breath.
Try it out this way: How many of our enraged young "intellectuals" are far more excited over various real or imagined political, social and racial evils within a flatulent, affluent society — the somewhat unsettled fate of the 'Chicago 7,' for instance — than the almost unbelievable daily plight of human suffering beyond any description in Nigeria, or, for that matter, the local county hospital, where one of their own friends may be screaming for the doctors to make those snakes quit crawling in and out of his nose, while trying to recover from a bad 'trip' on LSD?
If you are one who would gladly stand, rain-splattered, listening to the ranting of ultra-left liberals who would joyously greet the destruction of America with tears of gratitude — as opposed to one who could be found tending to the simplest necessary ministrations of mercy for an accident victim — you've no business reading further.
But if you do truly have a feeling towards fellow man — if you really do 'love' humanity, maybe there's an outside chance you'll understand the next few paragraphs.
You see, we are under a strange, symptomatic sort of curse — a last-minute dulling of humanitarian instincts in favor of the "I'll get mine" syndrome.
Most of us believe, deep in our bones, that humanity has simply had it. We not only wonder whether man WILL survive — we're beginning to wonder whether he should.
We can see the cause-and-effect relationship of calloused spectators watching helpless victims die. Having viewed tens of thousands of murders, rapes, muggings, robberies and assaults via novels, comics, television and the motion pictures, it's almost like another "scene" — unreal, somehow, and requiring no personal action on one's own part. We can readily understand why some people would prefer to remain "uninvolved," what with potential retribution from enraged fellow gang members, tiring hours talking to detectives at police stations, and having jobs interrupted for possible court appearances (and, anyhow, we have resignedly come to accept the notion that courts probably won't really punish criminals — after all, not ONE murderer died for his crime in either 1968 or 1969 in all the United States!).
But WHAT CONSTITUTES "INVOLVEMENT"?
You Are Involved!
When you see, with your own eyes, a bestial, hideous crime being committed, then, like it or not, YOU ARE involved.
You are already part of the "scene" if you witness a crime being committed!
Turning your back constitutes a double sin — a terrible crime, in itself! First, it denies aid and comfort to a desperate fellow human being, and therefore is a heinous and brutal deed. Second, it GIVES aid and comfort to the criminal, by guaranteeing him safety and anonymity in the commission of his crime. But our arguments are endless — we would probably conjure up all sorts of bloody scenes which would include ourselves, standing there helpless amidst a dozen crooks all armed with submachine guns, and us saying "but what could I do?"
We truly are living in the very times predicted by one of the apostles of the early New Testament Church! Paul told Timothy, "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of their own selves . . ." (II Tim. 3:1-2). A dramatic view into OUR self-seeking societies! And yet PREDICTED, centuries ago. Why? Was this just happenstance — or was the man actually inspired to see what the end result of human beings "doing their own thing" would be?
He went on to say, ". . . men shall be . . . covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents [never a more prevalent disease of society than now!] unthankful, unholy, without natural affection . . ." (II Tim. 3:2-3).
And we are all of these things, and more. The truth hurts, of course — and seeing ourselves as we really ARE is always a very painful experience — but the grisly statistics are true, fact is fact, and the incidents of fellow humans ignoring their neighbor's plight continue to mount day by day.
Will we ultimately come to the point where one neighbor, or fellow office worker, or even the member of the same family will remark, upon viewing the heavily bandaged person on the following day, "Oh, was that you screaming?"