Stage 4 Faith and the Bystander Effect/ by Steven Hamilton (Baltimore, MD)

I was talking to my wife Chaundra about this article ("The Impassive Bystander - Someone Is Hurt, in Need of Compassion. Is It Human Instinct to Do Nothing?") from the Washington Post a while back.  Click on the link and take a few minutes to read the article and watch the two short videos.  I’ll wait here.  


WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING.
…that is some utterly disturbing stuff, is it not?  Not just what it says, or what it shows (in the two video clips), but especially disturbing are the implications of the "bystander effect" as explained by sociologists and psychologists:

"Sociologists and psychologists have long studied what is known as bystander behavior. They say people are often unsure how to react to such events because they have difficulty processing what they are seeing. Witnesses to tragedy, especially when events are uncertain, often look around first. If no one else is moving, individuals have a tendency to mimic the unmoving crowd. Although we might think otherwise, most of us would not have behaved much differently from the people we see in these recent videos, experts say. Deep inside, we are herd animals, conformists. We care deeply what other people are doing and what they think of us. The classic story of conformist behavior can be found in the 1964 case of Kitty Genovese, the 28-year-old bar manager who was slain by a man who raped and stabbed her for about half an hour as neighbors in a New York neighborhood looked on. No one opened a door for her. No one ran into the street to intervene."

I suppose this shouldn't shock me so much in our day and age, but it really shakes me up (especially the video of the woman at the hospital, but equally the guy in Connecticut being run down)...where have all the good Samaritans gone?  Does fear and distraction dominate our lives so much...where is our responsive gut-wrenching compassion in all this?  Has our current living so fueled us with fear that we cannot respond? 

As we were wrestling with our own reaction to all this, my utterly honest Stage-4 faith wife said:

"Where are the good Samaritans? We're afraid. Thanks to the media, we are bred to fear everyone. We're self-centered. We would stop but we just don't have time. Someone else will.  We've taken this whole rugged individual, consumer thing too far. Trouble is, I am just as bad as the next person. I would love to stop and help the homeless person or the person in crisis, but first must consider the safety of my children and my possessions (my possessions to a lesser extent but still there, if I am honest). It makes me think that we, as parents, need to seriously consider how we purposefully sow into our children’s lives an attitude of selflessness modeled for them no matter what stage of faith they currently swim in. Yet how do we model? That means more than any words we can speak. It needs to be something they can see or experience. It's wonderful that you (me, that is Steven) are doing the anti- human trafficking ministry thing, but to the kids it's just something you do at meetings with grown ups and on the computer. It doesn't impact them very much. (Not that I am picking on that)…"

 

Truly I agree with Chaundra and what I think she was getting at has something to do with actually trying to be like Jesus; it also caused me to pause and to see how it relates to what we have been calling here Stage 4 faith.  

I think at one time or another along the journey of our Stage 4 Faith conversation, we have danced within distance of speaking of this mystical stage as a deeper, perhaps richer, connection to God, more comfortable with questions and uncertainty; or as our centered-set sages would say: moving toward Jesus steadily.  Certainly this mystical stance, this "reflective" or "contemplative" perspective of Stage 4 faith just might make us more present in a world filled with distractions.  Maybe words like "contemplative" are too loaded...too monastic...too religious? 

But from my limited exploration, psychologically, "contemplation" is traditionally seen as immediate, kind of grounded in the here-and-now. Thoughts and plans for the future and memories of the past can happen in contemplative-living, but they don't take one's attention away from one's desire for God or the needs of the situation at hand. Plans and memories, like thoughts, feelings and sense perceptions, are simply part of what is happening in the moment.  Yet in the moment we are still somehow more fully present.  And if we are more present, perhaps we can be more available when weird, tragic, or extreme situations arise and everyone else is paralyzed with the "bystander effect". 

Is it too much to say that the consequence of all this connection to God might make us less self-centered...more other-centered?  This is where I think the connection between how we respond to a crisis and Stage 4-mystical-type faith pushes us beyond the "bystander effect".   What do you think?    Are most “Good Samaritans” also good “Stage 4-ers”?  Or maybe to say that a little differently: can Stage 4 faith help us to overcome the “bystander effect” and respond as a good Samaritan?  How do we encourage and instruct/guide/help children and others to be and act like the good “Stage 4 Faith” person of Jesus’ “Good Samaritan” story?   Can you see other Stage 4 faith issues in this “bystander effect”?