What makes a good samaritan

Stand up against bullying. When you see someone bullying another person in public, at school, or at work, say something. There is power in numbers. Tutor a student who is struggling. Finding volunteers to help people of all ages learn to read can be difficult in most states. You can also check out our other blog here to find out how to inspire people to pick up a book.

Become a mentor to someone by signing up to be a Big Brother or Sister. You can find out about some benefits for mentoring in our blog here. Many Big Brothers and Big Sisters also see growth in themselves for being a mentor to someone else.

Help a neighbor take care of their yard. Sometimes we have a neighbor who is either disabled, elderly or a single parent who struggles to manage their yard work. If it is wintertime and your neighbor could use their driveway shoveled, can you offer a helping hand?

Or maybe you can rake the fall leaves. Brainstorm how you can help take care of a practical need. Drop off bus passes at a local school. If you drop off bus passes at a school office, the front office staff can offer it to students who are in need of public transportation help.

Donate blood. Many local blood banks are operating at a shortage. Did you know that one single blood donation has the potential to help up to four people? Be an Angel. Around the holidays, find a family in need. You can help put food on the table for the holiday and even help with gifts or basic necessities for their children.

Volunteer at a homeless shelter. Shelters can always use extra hands whether it is handing out food or helping prepare food. It can be a very humbling experience for young adults and kids to learn about generosity.

Your good deed for the day—whether lending a hand to a stranger or giving up your seat on the subway—may prompt others to see you as a good and trustworthy person, but not always. In certain circumstances, it may do just the opposite. New research published in Psychological Science , the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science , suggests that someone who helps a total stranger is generally viewed as morally better and more trustworthy than someone who helps a family member.

But this is true only if the helper did not have to choose between those options. In each of these scenarios, the researchers manipulated one specific element: whether the person being helped was a stranger or, alternatively, was distantly related to the person lending a hand. The good deeds presented in the tests were basic courtesies, like helping someone move into a new apartment. They did not require extreme physical or financial sacrifice. In one series of tests, participants read scenarios in which only one person—either a stranger or kin—could be helped.

People who helped a stranger were judged as more morally good and more trustworthy than people who helped an equally deserving family member. Additional members of the research team included Liane Young, an associate professor of psychology at Boston College, and Max Kleiman-Weiner, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. In a second series of tests, participants were faced with similar scenarios, except for one difference: The helper had to choose between helping either a stranger or a family member.

Helping one meant forgoing help to the other. Participants judged that people who chose to help a stranger over a family member were less morally good and less trustworthy than people who opted to help a family member. The researchers think these seemingly contradictory character judgments are actually connected by a single principle: familial obligation.

This same concept carried over into a third series of tests in which people simply chose to offer no help at all, e. In these cases, people who ignored the needs of a stranger were judged less critically than people who withheld help from a family member. We are the man left beaten the side of the road. We need someone to heal us from being left for dead. The good Samaritan shows us there is no way for us to recover on our own. We need Jesus to pick us up, pay our debt, and carry us home.

Being good is never good enough. The Good Samaritan reminds us there is no sliding into the kingdom of heaven by being good enough. The point of this story is not that good people, priests, Levites, or Samaritans go to heaven.

The point is that only Jesus was good enough to go to heaven. It is his mercy that we need. He is the only way to Salvation. The story of the good Samaritan is Jesus calling us to be neighbors to our enemies. This reminds us we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. We are blessed to be a blessing to others. Not the other way around.