Instinct

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

This weekend, as I was walking around downtown, a homeless man stepped in front of me, looked me in the eye and asked me for a quarter. Jarred by being so close to a man that I didn't know and someone who seemed to be a little mentally unstable, I averted my eyes, stepped around him and said, "sorry, I don't have it" and scurried away. Now, before, you start to call me a hypocrite, I'd like to say this. I honestly had absolutely no cash on me (only my debit card) and I acted purely on instinct. But, I felt terrible afterward; I really wished I could have turned back around to toss him the quarter or dollar I didn't have. But even the thought of just tossing it to him, rather than handing it to him and looking him the eyes, increased my guilt because it implied that he was subhuman. After all, it was the middle of the afternoon and there were many people around; if did he try to harm me I would have had someone to save me. However, I also had to wonder: would giving him money support a bad habit he may have or was he just hungry? Who was I to judge or to speculate!

But, I came across the quote for today and I had to share it and my experience with you. I think both highlight the fact that it's difficult to do good. We have to make a conscious choice to do it and when we're put into a precarious position like I was when we must decide to do good or not in a split second, we opt for the latter out of instinct. Does this mean that we are instinctively self-centered? Instinctively judgmental? Instinctively unhelpful? Please let me know what you think?

In the meantime consider today's challenge:
If faced with a similar predicament such as mine and you have to make a decision quickly, please opt to do good...and let me know how it went. Peace and good luck.