Bad Samaritan

Psychologists say that how you perceive strangers is a microcosm of how you perceive the world. If you believe that most people are intrinsically unethical and that they would put the screws to you if given a chance, then you are much more likely to put the screws to someone else.

For example, suppose you find a wallet. I am thinking of the case of Los Angeles-based writer Andrew Cohn, who was cleaning up after a backyard party and found a wallet on the ground with $40 in it. “I’d just spent $500 on the party,” says Cohn. “I figured the money was the girl’s contribution.” He kept the money and left the wallet, with ID and credit cards, on the ground. How did Cohn justify his actions? Well, he says, “If you expect someone’s going to return your wallet with all the cash, you’re probably a little delusional.” Davy Rothbart, who edits a magazine called Found, which features photos of lost objects, agrees with Cohn. “Really good Samaritans, if they find a wallet, they return it intact,” he says. “Some people find a wallet, take the money, but return the important stuff. That’s not evil.”

For another example, suppose you find a cell phone. The Defense Department analyst Ashton Giese was on his way home when he inadvertently dropped his cell phone on a Washington, D.C., street. When he discovered that his electronic life was missing, he frantically began dialing the cell’s number from another phone. He did not even know what time it was because, like many 21st-century people, he kept time with his phone rather than a watch. Finally, a voice answered. “Yeah, I got your phone,” said the voice. “But what’s it worth to you?” “Twenty bucks,” said a frantic Giese. He had no other cash on him at the time. “My phone is my life,” he says. “If I’d needed to, I would have paid a lot more.”

We might call such people “Bad Samaritans,” for they focus primarily on maximizing their reward or, in some sense, recouping something of what they believe society owes them.

I now come to my final example. Suppose you find someone battered on the side of the road. You might hurry past to your destination. You might look a bit closer, decide that this is not your problem, and move on past. Of course, you might do the old-fashioned thing of making time for the stranger who hurts. You might opt for some face-to-face time with the stranger. If you start doing that, you might slowly become a person who knows no strangers. You know only neighbors.

In fact, people who see strangers as outsiders, as enemies or as something less than themselves, will default to treating them that way, rather than as equals, or, to use Jesus’ term, as “neighbors.”

You might want to read Luke 10:29-37, prayerfully considering how “merciful” we are in our lives.