In church this morning, one of the readings was from the Gospel of St. Luke, 10:25-37, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. If you’re not familiar with the story, it talks about a lawyer who asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asks him what is written in the laws. The lawyer replies, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus replies, “You have given the right answer; do this and you will live.” However, the lawyer asks, “And who is my neighbor?” whereupon Jesus relates the story of the Good Samaritan, who, coming upon an injured man who others had avoided helping, comes to the aid of the man and takes care of him as others would not.

Our sermon was about a similar incident in modern times. Tom Beck, a frequent speaker in our church, related to us about a bicycle accident he suffered a few years ago where he was badly injured. A woman cyclist who he was trying to avoid collision with at the time of the accident attempted to help, but her husband, fearing lawsuit, pulled her away and they fled the scene of the accident on their bicycles despite pleas for help by Tom’s friend Alan, with whom he was cycling. Others happened by, were asked for help, but did not offer their cell phones so that emergency help could be summoned. In the meantime, Tom lay in a patch of poison ivy, a broken collarbone and a major concussion, bleeding from scrapes, as Alan desperately attempted to summon help from passers-by, more interested in continuing their jogs or bike rides or hikes along the trail.

Finally, it was related to us, a young man named Andrew happened in the scene of the accident, and using his cell phone, was able to summon emergency crews to the scene, whereupon a rescue was affected and Tom was safely transported to the hospital for treatment. It was related to him later that it could well have been a fatal accident and that he was very fortunate to be alive. That it took so long to find someone willing to stop for a few minutes and use their cell phone to summon help is astonishing, but in this litigious society in which we live, perhaps it’s not surprising that so few people were given to a bit of charity to help a gravely injured man in the middle of nowhere on the side of a trail.

It brings to mind the claims of our current administration of being “compassionate conservatives”, and “Christians”, and their close ties to the Religious Right, whose aim is a complete makeover of this country in their narrow image. I have to wonder, given the actions of this administration, if they have read the Parable of the Good Samaritan or Matthew 25:31-46, that speaks of caring for the least of those and how those are the people that will go to heaven, whereas those who failed to do so will languish in eternal damnation in hell. The recent House of Representatives budget vote that cuts $50 billion from social programs that benefit the least of those is a classic example of the skewed morality that seems to have infected Washington in recent years. We also saw their mindset in how they allowed so many of the poorest and most vulnerable among us to suffer the worst in the tragedies of the twin Gulf Coast hurricanes, Katrina and Rita.

This morning in church, we explored the idea of doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. I had a personal experience myself that confirms that I did the right thing because it was the right thing to do. I was in a recent automobile accident on the freeway late at night coming home from having dinner with friends. The accident was not my fault, and the other car responsible for the accident ran through a sign and tumbled down a steep embankment. I found this car about a quarter mile back from where I eventually was able to bring my car to a stop. As the police arrived and the paperwork was being filled out, the young woman driving the other car began complaining of a lot of pain from being jostled around when her car went down the embankment. She was very upset and crying and I did my best to comfort her and assure her that the damage to my car was minor, and anyway, my car is so old, it’s not worth worrying about. But I did insist that we call an ambulance and I insisted on staying on the scene long enough to make sure that she would get medical treatment, even though it was a bitterly cold November night.

Doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. That’s a concept that seems to be lost on so many people anymore, including those in Washington. For all their claims of Christianity, the Bible they read and the Bible I read don’t seem to agree on priorities. The Bible I read exhorts us to care for our fellow beings, particularly the most vulnerable among us. The Bible I read is full of valuable moral lessons on how we are to behave toward one another. The Bible I read does not condone torture, does not condone unprovoked war, does not condone bribery, does not condone war profiteering, does not condone any of the things that the “holier-than-thou” Bush administration has done in its five-year reign of terror and fear-mongering. I’d like to know which Bible Bush reads and how he seems to use it to justify the ends to his means. I also wish that he would quit blaspheming my personal hero, Abraham Lincoln, by trying to claim any connection between today’s Republican Party and the party of Lincoln’s era, which did the right thing, because it was the right thing to do, by freeing the slaves.

Do the right thing, Mr. Bush. Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. And oh, while you’re at it, why not try making that heathen Rove read the Bible with you someday to see what it has to say about the way this current class of Pharisees in Washington regards the lowly hoi-polloi, the middle and lower classes of this country. It seems to me that Bush, Rove & Co. needs a good dose of morality and a long overdue sense of social justice. As do, sadly, just about everybody in Washington these days. I only wish that more people would do the right thing, because it was the right thing to do. Imagine what kind of country we’d be if more people adopted that kind of mentality. The Irish philosopher Edmund Burke said it best, “The only way for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

Sally Burnell is on the Steering Committee of the Social Justice Committee at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent, Ohio. She can be contacted at sburnell@raex.com.