A birthday wish: Don't walk away from doing right

Happy birthday to me — if I have lived that long.

Today is theoretically my birthday, but writing this several days in advance, I have no idea if I actually completed another lap around the sun or not.

If I didn’t, my wife and kids will be disappointed (I think). Some other people not so much (I’m sure).

Anyway, I’m supposed to turn 58 today, which is not very significant for most people, but when I read so many obituaries for so many other people who didn’t make it to 58, I am definitely willing to get a little excited about good health, good cheer and good luck, as I rev up for the big push to 60.

And as the world around me seems to be spinning out of control, I am also pondering the nature of good and evil and what responsibility I have in the few years left to me.

Of course, it is easy to embrace the good in the world, but sometimes remarkably hard for people to confront evil — to name it for what it is and to stand up to it. It seems that more often we hope to slide by evil, to walk on the other side of the road, so to speak, until it is out of sight and out of mind.

 But whether you acknowledge it or not, the struggle between good and evil is the governing principle that will measure the worth of our lives much more so than whether they were long or short, easy or hard, rich or poor.

No better lesson of this has ever been taught than the parable of the Good Samaritan as recorded in Luke 10:25-37. Jesus uses the story to teach his followers how to be a good neighbor, which we might say is really how to be a good person. And the story also lays out our three apparent choices in life — good, evil and neutrality — and makes us acknowledge that neutrality in the war between good and evil is a false choice.

The robbers who beat and rob the man walking from Jerusalem to Jericho clearly represent evil. The priest and the Levite who saw the wounded man and did nothing to help him represent neutrality. Finally comes the Samaritan, the good man who came to the place where the fallen man lay bleeding in the street “and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.”

Jesus asks an expert in Jewish law, which in general held Samaritans to be an outcast people, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” and was told “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus then responded to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Fortunately, there are few situations in life where we need to make life and death decisions, but every day we must decide whether we will embrace good, evil or “neutrality.” The reason why this parable is so powerful, and so relevant today is because it condemns even more harshly the priest and the Levite than the robbers.

The robbers are but an acknowledgment that evil exists in this world. It is self-evidently bad. But the priest and the Levite (a member of a Jewish class that was related to the priesthood) were presumed to be good. And the Samaritan, to a Jewish audience, would have been presumed to be bad.  

It doesn’t matter, in other words, who we are, but what we do — namely what we do in response to evil (which by the way is presumed by Jesus’ story to be a pre-existing condition) — and here we are very clearly taught that neutrality in response to evil is unacceptable. It is not “neighborly” to let evil go unanswered, nor to walk gingerly past its devastating effects as if we could avoid responsibility.

I’m not sure how many of my readers believe in good and evil any more, but I suspect most of you do.

Today, as I blow out the candles and celebrate what I hope will be the beginning of another happy and healthy year, I will wish for only one thing — that more of us will learn to see evil for what it is and fight the robbers among us. Do not be afraid like the priest and Levite, but show compassion like the good Samaritan.

We will all be better for it.