In 2021, I wrote an op-ed for The East Hampton Star titled Listening Is Not Enough, during what many hoped would be a turning point in America’s long struggle with racial injustice. In that piece, I reflected on the national response to the tragic deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd. People marched. People donated. People listened. But as I warned then, too many stopped at listening. Compassion without action may feel righteous, but it changes nothing.
Since then, I’ve continued wrestling with this pattern of inaction — from the streets to the pews. In a journal article for Christian Ethics Today titled Christians Can Be Bad Neighbors, I argued that many churches in America are not indifferent by accident but by design. Too often, they are structured around internal programs, busyness, and worship-as-spectacle, rather than love for neighbor as a public, disruptive force in the world. The result is a disturbing paradox: churches on every corner, yet suffering on every block.
I addressed these themes again in a lecture and sermon called Opening Our Eyes to Suffering, where I challenged Christians to move beyond empathy as a private emotion and embrace love as a public ethic. That presentation, rooted in Luke’s parable of the Good Samaritan, made this point clear: those who see suffering and walk away are not neutral. They are morally accountable. That’s the message I believe America — and especially the church — must hear now: inaction is not neutral. Inaction is immoral.
Glancing Is Not Seeing
The Good Samaritan story begins with a religious question: What must I do to inherit eternal life? But Jesus responds with a moral one: Who proved to be a neighbor? In the parable, two religious leaders — the priest and the Levite — see a beaten man in need and do nothing. Only the Samaritan stops, acts, and loves.
We must stop imagining that inaction is merely a failure of time or convenience. It is a spiritual decision. The priest and Levite weren’t evil in the conventional sense — they just had somewhere else to be. They passed by not out of malice, but out of misordered priorities. That’s what makes their example so haunting. Because it mirrors us. In my lecture, I described this as the “spiritual disease of busyness.” We’re so insulated by the schedules we construct and the institutions we maintain that we rarely allow ourselves to see suffering, let alone be changed by it. And love that refuses to see is no love at all.
Love as a Public Act
Scripture makes this clear. In 1 John 3:17, we are told that anyone who sees a sibling in need and does nothing does not have the love of God in them. In John 13, Jesus commands us to love one another as he loved us—not sentimentally, but sacrificially. And in Matthew 25, Jesus says that how we treat “the least of these” is how we treat him.
These are not metaphors. They are moral mandates.
Yet, in a country where Christianity remains a dominant identity, we see little public evidence that these commands are being taken seriously. We have elaborate sanctuaries, multimillion-dollar budgets, and high-tech praise bands — but somehow, we cannot muster the courage to protect the poor, welcome the refugee, or reform unjust systems. This is not just a social failure. It is a spiritual crisis. The church must ask itself: how can we bear the name of Jesus and ignore his people? What does it mean to say we love God while letting our neighbors suffer on the roadside?
Seeing as a Spiritual Discipline
In the lecture and sermon I gave on Opening Our Eyes to Suffering, I emphasized that love begins not in the heart, but in the eyes. The Samaritan saw the wounded man and was moved with compassion. The others looked — but didn’t see.
Too often, Christians are taught to feel, but not to see. We love those who are close to us or those who are easy to help. But biblical love is indiscriminate. It is inconvenient. It disrupts. And it requires a deep discipline of seeing people in their full humanity — especially those systems have taught us to overlook.
My recent work centers on what I now call the moral burden of interruption: that moment when we encounter pain or injustice and are faced with a choice — to keep walking or to stop and love. The Samaritan story is an interruption narrative. His entire day changed because of what he saw. That kind of love has the power to break cycles of injustice, but only if we are willing to be interrupted — and changed — by what we see.
A Nation Drifting from Love
As we confront this moral crisis, we must also confront the national culture that enables it. Under recent political leadership, efforts to confront systemic racism, teach uncomfortable history, or care for the poor have faced renewed backlash. Public policies are being crafted not to extend compassion, but to insulate privilege. In this environment, love becomes dangerous. And inaction becomes normalized.
But we who follow Christ must resist this. Not just in our voting, but in our living. Being a good neighbor is not a private virtue — it is a public testimony. It is how we bear witness to a different kingdom, one in which love is not abstract but embodied, not optional but essential.
Conclusion: Go and Do Likewise
The moral crisis of inaction will not be solved by another statement, another panel, or another Sunday sermon. It will be solved when Christians rediscover that discipleship is action. When we stop asking, “What must I believe?” and start asking, “What must I do?” And when we, like the Samaritan, stop what we’re doing long enough to see, to care, and to love our neighbors as if they were Christ himself. In the end, Jesus does not tell us to go and feel deeply. He says, “Go and do likewise.” The world is waiting to see if we will.