I don't know how many times I have either read in the paper or heard on the news situations where people are being robbed or beaten up in the streets and bystanders simply walk on by, supposedly minding their own business, and view the incident as a distraction and perhaps even thinking, "glad it's not me." But no one seems to get involved in helping victims of crime. To make matters worse, the direction of modern-day humanistic law is progressively absolving men of any legal obligation to be "Good Samaritans" to help our neighbor in need.

However, for bystanders to fail to render aid to a person in need of help was once a serious offense, and even recently, to a limited degree, the man who failed to render aid was liable to serious penalties. For example, a bystander can watch a farmer's house or barn burn and do nothing, but in the case of a forest fire the bystander was required render action as demanded or face penalties from a court. And I remember this well, for in the days of my youth we never entered a national forest without an axe and a shovel.

Formerly, all bystanders had a legal duty to render aid to any hue and cry. The expression, hue and cry, is a legal term and was used in cases when a criminal escaped, or was discovered, or if a criminal act was committed, then the summons, or the "hue and cry," to assist was legally binding on all, and failure to respond to the "hue and cry" was considered a crime.

This responsibility to assist those in need comes to us from Scripture, and Biblical law affixes responsibility on the bystander under certain situations. For example, Deuteronomy 22:1-4 declares:

1 Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox nor his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them; thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy brother.
2 And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him not, then thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be with thee, until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again.
3 In like manner shalt thou do with his ass; and so shalt thou do with his raiment; and with all lost things of thy brother's, which he hath lost, and thou hast found, shalt thou do likewise: thou mayest not hide thyself.
4 Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass or his ox fall down by the way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again.

Here again we have what lawyers would call case law. Case law provides a ruling on a particular situation which provides a principle of law to be applied in other similar situations. The basis of this case law is that we are to "love thy neighbor as thyself."

Normally oxen and sheep were secured in a given area, but on occasion they might get out and wander away, and in this regard the law provides that we must protect lost or strayed animals and do everything in our power to see that they are restored to their rightful owner.

From verse 3, it follows that the same would be true for all types of personal property, and if we do not secure our neighbor's property, then we rob him of his property by our neglect.

No, if the bystander has an obligation to render aid "with all lost things" of another man, he has an even more pressing obligation to help rescue a person from danger. This principle of responsibility appears in Deuteronomy 22:23-27 where a woman being sexually assaulted in a city is presumed to have given consent if she does not raise a cry. This is probably the origin of the term "hue and cry."

But when a damsel cried out for help, every man hearing her cry had a duty to render immediate aid, and failure to do so was regarded as an abomination which polluted the land and, figuratively, darkened the sun. The horror felt at such an offense is reflected in Jewish tradition which taught that neglect was worse than giving false witness. This is because while the false witness misrepresents the truth; the non-interfering bystander becomes an accomplice to the crime by his refusal to render aid.

Psalms 50:18 addresses those who were indifferent to crime, saying:

When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him; and has been partaker with adulterers.

The idea is that when you see a thief and say or do nothing to stop or apprehend him, then you consent to the theft and are as much a thief as the thief himself, whether or not you get any of the spoil. In this regard, you do not "love thy neighbor as thyself" when you allow a thief to steal from him.

I don't think that it is unreasonable to assume that the penalty for the inactive bystander was the same as that of the false witness. False witnesses received the punishment which was meted out to the person found guilty by the false testimony. If he received stripes, the false witness received stripes, and if death, then death.

We should recognize that the silent or inactive bystander is also a kind of witness, a witness who consents to the crime by his failure to report a crime or failure to act when a crime is being committed in his presence. The inactive bystander is thus an accomplice, and becomes an accessory to the crime, and therefore, is liable to the penalty for the crime.

Thus Biblical law makes it quite clear that the bystander who witnesses unlawful acts or observes a neighbor's property in jeopardy has a responsibility to his fellow man. If fact, since the law requires a person to act in behalf of his neighbor, it precludes him from being an inactive bystander. An old, old court case stated this same principle in different words saying: the law "requires the doing of good at all times."

Doing good at all times does not mean that we can watch things being damaged without trying to stop that damage. Doing good at all times does not mean that we can avoid testifying to a crime we have witnessed. Doing good at all times does not mean that we can walk away when someone is being robbed, beaten, or raped.

Acts of assistance such as saving the ox or the sheep, the maid in distress, helping the man being robbed, recovering a neighbor's property, or rebelling against a tyrannical government, are acts which test a man's mettle, and are pleasing unto God.

Thus every citizen had the power of arrest and that duty or right comes from these very Biblical principles, that when a man or woman raised a cry of distress, every man had a duty to answer that cry and enforce the law. And yes, even in this day and age, all citizens in the United States have the duty and the right of arrest and it all arises from this Biblical heritage.

By the way, under common law, a sheriff still has the right to muster every male citizen of a community 15 years of age or older to assist him in the enforcement of law.

However, don't expect your sheriff or city police to understand these principles or responsibilities. From their perspective, the police power of the citizen is best exercised in rendering aid to the police and to victims of crimes. What that amounts to is that Police prefer that witnesses summon them, take note of the events, perhaps sign an affidavit, and leave the rest to them. They would not even begin to suggest that you carry a gun to exercise your responsibility as they want to be the only ones to carry guns.

If I am not mistaken, it is not a crime in any state for a citizen to fail to disclose the commission of a felony to police on his own initiative. On the other hand, by act of Congress it is a crime in the United States if a federal felony is unreported.

What this means to you and me is that if we witness an armed robbery and went our quiet way we'd be on the right side of the law. But if we saw a mail robbery and didn't call the cops we just committed a federal felony.

But look what has happened in our society because of the lack of participation on the part of the average citizen. Today the papers tell us that crime is an epidemic in this county, and the shocking apathy of many people toward "becoming involved" in stopping crimes.... is unparalleled in our history.

If the law does not require you to call the cops when the store is robbed or someone is brutally beaten; if you are liable to false arrest charges when apprehending a criminal on your own; then we can only conclude that the state really isn't serious about controlling crime. They are serious about hiring more cops, but they are not serious about controlling crime.

Our legal situation in this country may be inconsistent but the Biblical legal requirement is not. The inactive bystander is a party to the crime, and the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:29-37 was based on this Biblical law.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite avoided the victim and "passed by on the other side." The religious leaders claimed to obey the law; they tithed "mint and rue and all manner of herbs," but they passed over the "judgment and the love of God" (Luke 11:42).

To them it was an easy matter to tithe mint but it required sacrifice and sometimes required moral courage to help a victim, but in the case of the Good Samaritan, not even courage was required, only assistance to a victim abandoned by the criminals.

The point is the religious leaders only kept the law when it cost them little or nothing to do so -- thus they were not good neighbors.

It is a serious error to reduce the parable of the Good Samaritan to the level of feeling alone, or to a matter of charity; these things are subordinate to the law of the bystander being applied in this case.

Those who ignore the laws of God are as the bystander who does nothing. They profess to love the Lord and His ways, but they choose simple matters for obedience and despise the things which are inconvenient to do.