Safety First

The story of the Good Samaritan is told in Luke 10:25-37. The Samaritan was not the first to come upon the wounded man that day-- the first two men "passed by on the other side." Could the the first two men just been afraid? Abandoned man on the highway, stripped, beaten, half-dead-- sounds very dangerous and ... unsafe.
Safety first! It is a mantra of modern suburban middle-class American culture. We avoid the uncomfortable, choosing instead the comfort of our safe schools, suburbs, and streets. We stay away from the inner cities; it's too dangerous! We ignore when millions are starving in Somalia; let's pray for the missionaries (when we remember to pray), especially pray for their safety and safe return to modern American comfort.
Christ didn't play it safe. It wasn't safe to challenge Pharisees, to be with publicans and sinners, to have no place to lay his head even. He wants obedience even in the absence of safety. See Luke 9. Francis Chan, in Crazy Love, proposes, "It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism, that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the Gospel. It is a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church-going, hollow-hearted prosperity." Ouch!
Extreme poverty has a smell. I smell it now each day in Kenya. One of my earliest encounters with the smell of poverty was in the backseat of our 1994 Pontiac. I'll never forget riding with the hitch-hikers my dad picked up when we were kids. Not only the smell, but the tattered clothes and "help me! i'm homeless!" signs have been embedded in my head since I was a youngster. Associated with this image, are the many spiritual conversations that took place in that car.
Picking up hitch-hikers is probably considered an "unsafe" practice. Most the time we keep driving-- are we lacking in compassion or is this too unsafe for us (or both)? Certainly I think this is situational (as I would never want my wife to pick up a man for example), but I think as Christians we should be actively involved in loving our neighbor somewhere. It will look different to different people. Maybe there is someone near you that you never thought to help, but now can see the need and are not afraid. Again, from Crazy Love, "If I were a non-Christian, would my life look any different than it does now?"
The beauty of the Good Samaritan is as an individual he decided to love his neighbor. He didn't second guess the traveler's choice of road or time of day that he had traveled. He could have easily said, "You shouldn't have traveled here." or "You should have had defense." How often is this our excuse for not helping-- the "they brought this on themselves" philosophy. I do believe it is as important how you help someone as in the fact that you do help them. But, ultimately, we should act. The Good Samaritan didn't question; he acted in obedience even in a dangerous and unsafe world.