Christians face call to action

‘I thought someone else would do it.”

That excuse rang hollow back in 1964 when New York City police asked 38 witnesses why none of them helped Kitty Genovese as she was attacked in broad daylight.

Genovese was stabbed to death in three attacks by an assailant who chased her for half an hour. No one helped her even though they saw the attack or listened in horror behind closed apartment doors.

Their excuse: “I thought someone else would do it.”

Sociologists say it is our tendency to neglect personal responsibility when we’re in a group. Our sense of obligation to become involved – even in the face of moral outrage – actually decreases when the number of people around us increases.

It’s not that we’re awful people. We simply assume someone else will step into the breach and do what is right.

Forty years after Genovese’s stunning murder, it is common for blatant wrong to go unchallenged. Need proof?

Spokane’s mayor is mired in scandal after admitting, with no apparent remorse, that he solicited young men via the Internet for homosexual encounters. Public outrage rightly centers on Jim West’s duplicity; his politically conservative public life concealed private immorality.

But discourse about the scandal largely ignores the sin of homosexuality and its attendant social problems. That would be politically incorrect, and intolerant, so truth remains unspoken.

Television documentaries on the Jewish Holocaust are commonplace, yet the ongoing holocaust of abortion-on-demand in America is largely ignored in the mainstream media. After World War II, Winston Churchill marveled at the world’s silence while the Nazis rose to power.

His hindsight applies to today’s abortion crisis: “All that is needed for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.”

Our culture shakes an accusatory finger at children increasingly predisposed to drug use and premarital sex but withholds from their classrooms the biblical truths that offer real solutions. God is no longer welcome in the schoolhouse, and fewer people seem outraged.

Throughout history, God has called out to his people to take a stand for what is right, as he defines it.

In the days of the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah, Israel lived in open sin. Nobody seemed to care.

God’s displeasure extended even to religious leaders, because “they have not distinguished between the holy and the unholy, nor have they made known the difference between the unclean and the clean….” (Ezekiel 22:26).

Parallels to today are obvious. Today, God looks for the same thing he looked for in the days of his faithful prophets: “So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me … but I found no one” (Ezekiel 22:30).

In Israel, no one wanted to lead the people to repentance and back into God’s way of living.

I can’t help but wonder if the thought occurred to some folks, but no one acted. I wonder if they reasoned in hindsight, “I thought someone else would do it”?

Christians today have a calling to stand in the gap between a holy God and a wayward culture. We can do so in several ways.

First, we stand in the gap when we intercede in prayer. We have the example of Moses, who pleaded with God to have mercy on the Israelites, whose desert wanderings remain a case study in the consequences of ignoring God’s will.

Jesus himself interceded in prayer for his disciples, even as the shadow of his cross drew near. They are models to follow today. Will we pray for revival, for a turning of hearts toward God? Or do we figure someone else will do it?

We also stand in the gap by defending truth. There is an incessant assault on truth today, so much so that the very notion of absolute truth defined by sacred Scriptures is laughed away as fable.

This supposed enlightenment has left a void in the world.

What is missing? Hope – the very thing promised in the Scriptures to those whose faith is in Christ.

Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the Apostle Peter: “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you….” (1 Peter 3:15).

Peter also points to a third way we can stand in the gap: by boldly proclaiming the gospel. That gospel – salvation by faith in Christ alone – is the essence of the hope that is within us.

The legacy of those who watched Kitty Genovese’s murder is a tragic one. I often wonder what will be the legacy of this generation of Christians.

Will we boldly step into the gap? Or might we also be remembered as those who declared: “I thought someone else would do it”?