Leading Souls to God One at a Time
I just recently saw a video of a man and his fiance, walking in New York City, when three men came out of nowhere and began to mug the woman. They pulled her hair and threw her to the ground. At that moment the man began to fight these robbers all by himself. With mighty swings the man threw punch after punch in an attempt to run off the robbers, but they kept coming back. At one point a crowd had gathered and started to watch the event. When the fight began the man who was fighting the thugs lost his hat, and at this point in the altercation one of the crowd members threw the man's hat back to him, as if it was a life line. At this the man looked down at the hat and was instantly sucker punched by one of the thugs. As he fell, he saw all three of the thieves run over to his fiance.
They began to choke her, and kick her. The man became enraged and jumped up and began to assault the assailants. He connected with huge punches and as the thugs fell down the crowd cheered. They would fall down and get back up, then he would hit them again, and they would fall, and the crowd cheered. This happened until finally the cops came on horseback to arrest the offenders.
As I watched this news clip, the reporter talked about how this man was a hero, and how the city was proud to have him as their own. But, all I could think of was the crowd. There were over 30 people that watched this happen. One person even caught it on video, all of it! And the only thing that this crowd did to help was to throw a hat!? They watched as a woman got beaten and choked by three men and they threw a hat? And then, had the nerve to cheer when the man gained the upper hand! Not one person stepped in to help. Not one man said "No, this is not going to happen like this".
What was even more disturbing than all of this is that no one seemed to notice that everyone just watched. The news reporters didn't catch it; the news anchors didn't catch it, no one. That makes me wonder, if people wouldn't step up for someone they actually saw getting hurt, do we like to see people getting hurt? Think about it. What shows do we watch on TV? What sports do we love the most? Why are there so many reality shows that have the possibility for us to see a fist fight over a bagel, or some nonsense? Even in the church we sit and if we hear that someone said this about this person are we not drawn in by the drama? Do we not want to see so and so give her the preverbal "business" because they need to be put in their place?
Jesus came to heal the lost and the hurt, but it can seem that we put the lost and hurt in a ring and cheer for one of them to kill the other. A modern day coliseum of emotional and verbal fights to the death. Many of us say we would jump right in that fight and help that man beat the daylights out of those thugs without a second thought, but do we jump as fervently toward those people who are hurt where no one can see.
