"Good Samaritan"

The Washington Post recently published a news story in which a Lee County (Florida) sheriff deputy was violently attacked by a citizen who was in turn shot dead by another civilian who witnessed the altercation. I found the news story incredibly disturbing by the single fact that the Post decided to describe the shooter as a “Good Samaritan”, relaying the way that the Lee County Sheriff’s Office had used to refer to the man who intervened on the deputy’s behalf. The more I read the story, the more disturbing I found the description of the shooter as a “Good Samaritan”. I will give the Post credit for the exercise of journalistic integrity in their use of quotes in the headline and throughout their news story. It makes me wonder if the reporter was just as shocked to hear the phrase used so casually in this incident. Who knows. It may just be the opposite, which is precisely what I find disturbing.

Perhaps, you might remember the Parable of the Good Samaritan from the Bible, Luke 10:25-37. In it Jesus tells of a man who is assaulted by criminals and is left for dead. Two passersby see him and keep on their way. But a third one stops, picks him up, gives him shelter, cares for him and then departs not before providing for his safe and full recovery. Jesus tries to drive the point home to his hearers that our neighbor is whom we might least expect it to be. And he leaves us no wiggle room about what we are to do when confronted with the moment of decision. The man is as good as dead. What do we do? Sit on our asses or do something that would indicate we are familiar with the concept of “neighbor”. The action implies that we should always err on the side of life, protecting it, preserving it, cherishing it, because life is sacred.

The other two passersby gave the attacked man up for dead. Their assumption was that there was nothing left to do for him. The third man, the one we now know as the Good Samaritan, did not trust himself to assume anything. He made sure there was no place in him for that risk. He made sure he checked and found out there was still hope for this man whom most had given up for dead, as far as the story and possibly Jesus’ hearers were concerned. He interrupted and delayed his plans for the sake of one man in need.

I am so distraught about the story involving the Lee County Sheriff Deputy not so much because a man is dead. And that is awful enough. I want to state in no unmistakable terms that this man’s death could have been avoided. It was completely unnecessary, even senseless, to shoot him, much less three times. We may never know the complete details of the incident that gave us on one end a dead man and on the other a “Good Samaritan”. The deputy’s aggressor is dead. There is no question that he would have ended up in jail for assaulting an officer of the law had he lived to tell the story, but we’ll never know the full story. The shooter ended up killing him, intended or not, after a warning. I wonder how the shooter might be doing right now. He took another person’s life after all and that’s no small thing. It will always be with him. Was it absolutely necessary to use deadly force in this instance? Absolutely not.

Perhaps, this is what I find so heartbreaking about this shooting. It was precisely the use of deadly force that gained the shooter the description of “Good Samaritan”. That’s a lot of weight to carry on your shoulders because being a “Good Samaritan” implies that you are a lifesaver not a life taker. When you are a “Good Samaritan”, at least according to the Bible, you don’t pit one life against another. Both are equally valuable and deserving in God’s eyes. There’s no way in God’s wide earth to call yourself a neighbor, particularly a good neighbor, when you end up taking somebody else’s life at the expense of another, regardless of how justifiable the circumstances may have seemed at face value. The argument is that he saved the life of an officer from great bodily and even deadly harm, but no one will be able to do away with the fact that he did it at the expense of another life and that both lives could have been spared not just one. Are you sure you are OK with being called a “Good Samaritan” in these circumstances? Puzzled and hurt at the remark, the dead man’s brother’s reply was, “Was my brother armed?” It is as if he’s saying “‘Good Samaritan’ my ass! My brother’s dead! How dare they call the shooter that!” I know I’m not the only one thinking this way.

If I am reading the parable correctly, Good Samaritans will go to great lengths to preserve their enemy’s life. They’ll do it even at their own personal expense. We need to take into account that in the story of the Bible, the real Good Samaritan was willing to risk his own life exposing himself to the same fate of the victim he stopped to tend to. The victim was caught up alone in a dangerous and isolated passage. It could have easily been two victims instead of one. You might be thinking right now “precisely my point”, but I would say the difference that Christ is actually pointing us to through his story is that there could have been two lives saved, not just one. Most people would be prone to think here that the life that mattered was saved. Most people would be wrong.

Perhaps the Sheriff’s Office and the community of Lee County wanted to commend the shooter for his “good” deed. “Good Samaritan” sounds just about right, but in this particular instance it is simply wrong. Its use just shows how twisted our values have become (besides showing how biblically illiterate we are). Nothing new here. Our values have been twisted for a long time, regardless of a pro second amendment stance or not. For some, my life is a good as the concealed gun permit they carry. For others, their gun is as good as God. I doubt this case, as horrible and frightening in some respects as it is, will contribute to further the discussion of gun law reform we sorely need. More than likely, it will reaffirm the mindset of the need for a robust pro second amendment approach to guns, which only means the less gun control there is the better. I don’t know if the shooter has been able to sleep well at night since the incident, but the Sheriff’s Office, and everyone else with it, did him wrong by calling him a “Good Samaritan”. Of course, it’s all out of good intentions. Had they just known a bit about what Jesus meant in his story, they would have used a non-biblical descriptor or none at all.

Am I really a “Good Samaritan” for taking a life while saving another? What would this man have done if he hadn’t been armed? Would he had intervened? Would the Sheriff’s Office still consider him a “Good Samaritan” if the attacker had lived? Are we living in the wild, wild west? Maybe most will consider the question preposterous, but there is something eerily wrong with celebrating actions that take life instead of preserving and protecting it. It is preposterous to call those actions good and it is preposterous to call anyone who does them “Good Samaritan”.