I'm going on a mission trip in a few months. It won't be a six-month adventure like Uganda, but a two-week stint in Los Angeles. My church has sent a team to the City of Angels every summer for the past three years, starting when the drug wars in Mexico made their former jaunts to Tijuana seem unwise. I've had the good fortune of being able to attend each of these annual trips; so this will be my fourth visit to LA's Dream Center.
The upcoming trip's had me thinking about last year's visit, which has, in turn, had me mulling over the nature of courage, the ideals of chivalry and whether I will ever be the man I sometimes like to think I am.
We were on Skid Row one afternoon last year, talking and praying with the folks who call the streets and sidewalks in that part of town their home. As is normal for such a venture, we met a number of wonderful people and had some great opportunities to talk a bit about how God loves us and hear a lot about how He works in the lives of people on the street.
As our group rounded a corner, a man approached us and suggested we cross the street. "There's some crazy guy with a knife up ahead." he explained.
We moved in the direction he pointed us and continued praying and talking our way down the road. As we approached the far end of the block, we found the knife-wielding man we'd been warned about.
He was dressed in the oversize, barely-stays-on sort of clothing gangsters wear these days. His pale complexion and light-coloured clothes made me wonder if he'd only arrived in sunny California recently. The man was clearly under the influence of something heavy; despite his size (Which was approximately "Refrigerator"), his staggering steps and jerky movements made it seem like a strong gust of wind might send him headlong. As people passed, he grabbed them, threatened them with a knife and took whatever they had. A man in a wheelchair tried to stop him, to no avail.
Our group stopped and watched the proceedings. Someone went into the office building we'd gathered in front of and asked the security guard if anyone had called the police. They had.
A young lady came around the corner opposite us and, seeing the large gangster with a knife, tried to sneak behind him. He turned as she approached him and grabbed her hair. I suddenly felt very anxious.
We have to do something!
He pushed her up against a wall and waved the knife in her face. I wondered if we were about to witness a murder.
Why aren't we doing something?
I looked at our leader. Ex military. I saw another man in our group. Also ex military. I saw one of the "dads" in our church, a man whose physical prowess makes me feel like a bum even when we're sitting in a van. I saw two teens in our group who grew up in a military family. I considered myself - not much to look at, but with some weight to toss around.
He slapped her across the face. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut.
We could take him, no problem. Why aren't we doing anything?
I wanted to run across the street, pull that drunken gangster's pants down and push him over. But I didn't.
He took her purse.
I wanted to grab the refrigerator-man from behind and toss him off the elevated sidewalk. Instead, I waited for our leader to make a move.
He slapped her again.
By the time the police arrived (something like two minutes later) and arrested the gangster, the girl had been sent away bruised and weeping. No one comforted her.
As we left the scene, my punched-in-the-gut feeling grew. One girl turned to me and said, "That was pretty intense, huh?" I mumbled some half-hearted reply.
What sort of person am I, I wondered, that I can watch a young girl suffer assault at the hands of an evil man and do nothing to stop him? What sort of godly man am I, that I will not risk injury to aid those weaker than me? What sort of Christ do I suppose I serve, that, on a mission to help the hurting, I stand and observe while people are hurt? Why didn't I act? Why did I just stand there and wait for someone to give me permission to do the right thing?
For the next day or so, I found myself in a foul mood. I spent a dis-ordinate amount of time on the verge of tears, so completely unimpressed with myself that I wanted only to be alone until I'd sorted myself out. Unfortunately (Or maybe it was fortunate, after all.), the Dream Center has a rule against going places alone; so I was forced to inflict myself upon my team-mates regardless.
A few of them tried, as gently as ever I've seen, to discuss what had happened and find out what was bothering me. Some seemed to think I'd simply been troubled by the violence of what occurred. To be honest, I feared discussing it with them because I worried I might be told the last thing I needed to hear - that I was somehow right to stay on our side of the street.
I worried that I'd be told that following our leader's example was the best thing to do. After all, he is ex-military; so he'd best know what to do in a conflict like that. Besides, he was in charge; and we have a responsibility to respect and follow our authorities.
But a large man was hurting someone! Isn't there something universally wrong about letting that happen? Wouldn't it be better to have helped and get yelled at later than to stand there and let him slap her around? Don't I have a responsibility to fight oppression and protect hose who need protecting?
I worried I might be reminded that the man of Frigidaire proportions was versed in "street life" and armed with a blade. Had things taken an ill turn, I could have died.
She would have been worth dying for, right? Jesus died for her just as much as He died for me; what makes my life more valuable than His? Isn't part of the Christian ideal that we consider others as more important than ourselves? (Pp 2:3)
The bottom line is, though I'd long hoped that I should be the sort of man who helps others in trouble, I failed to help when it counted. No amount of writing about the ills of the indifferent observer would make me a man of action. Only action ever will.
When I returned home, I met with some of my friends and discussed what had transpired. They told me exactly what I had needed to hear:
Yeah, you screwed up. You should have helped her; and your failure to do so means that you're not nearly as bad-[asterisk] as you like to think you are. Yeah, you need to work on that. We love you, sir; and we have faith that, next time, you'll know what to do.
I try to boil down the lessons I learn into phrases or statements that help me remember them when it counts. After chewing on this for a while, I wrote down a sentence that would ensure the point stuck with me:
"The good man who waits for others to do the good he can do is not a good man."
The Monsignor, at the opening scene of The Boondock Saints, put it this way:
"Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men!"
Once again, I need to stress that this is a story about my sin - about my colossal failure to do what I should have. I know that my thoughts on this topic could be a Romans 14 sort of thing , a grey area in the vast tapestry of theology; so I cannot pretend it was anyone else's responsibility to help that poor girl.
If only I felt that call to do something, the one hero she had that day was too busy waiting for someone else to make a move.
-isaac
