Bible
Reading: John 5:1-9 Key Verse: Verse 7
- “The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am
coming, another steppeth down before
me.”
Key
Words: I have no man
Thirty-eight years and no man
cared…what an indictment! I would call
that being irresponsible, wouldn’t you?
A scene that occurred on a New York City street:
Kitty Genovese was slowly and brutally stabbed to death. At least thirty-eight of her neighbors witnessed
the attack and heard her screams. In the
course of the 90-minute episode, her attacker was actually frightened away,
then he returned to finish her off. Yet
not once during that period did any neighbor assist her, or even telephone the
police.
The implications of this tragic
event shocked America,
and it stimulated two young psychologists, Darly and Latane, to study the
conditions under which people are or are not willing to help others in an
emergency. In essence, they concluded
that responsibility is diffused.
The more people present in an
emergency situation, the less likely it is that any one of them will offer
help. This is popularly called the
“bystander effect.” (In the actual experiment,
when one bystander was present, 85 percent offered help. When two were present, 62 percent offered
help. When five were present, then it
decreased to 31 percent.)
Reminds me of the saying: “There once was a job
anybody could do but nobody did. When
everybody found out that nobody had done what anybody could have done,
everybody got upset at somebody.” Now,
the moral of the story is simply this: if somebody would have done the job that
anybody could do, nobody would have gotten upset with anybody. Moral: get involved for God.
What to do:
✞
Do
unto others as you would have them do unto you.
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