devotional thot 4

I read this week about a sociological study conducted at Princeton Theological Seminary in which seminarians were asked to prepare a brief talk on a Biblical subject, and present it at a nearby building on campus. As they walked across campus to deliver their talk, the budding theologians encountered an actor, slumped in an alley, head down, eyes closed, coughing and groaning, obviously injured and in need of help. The researchers wanted to know what factors would predict who would stop and offer assistance. Would it matter if the students had entered seminary because they wanted to help people? Did it matter what topic the students were asked to speak about? How much of an impact would it make if the students were late for their speaking engagement?

The researchers gave the students a brief questionnaire about why they chose to attend seminary. Was their interest in theology merely academic, or did they intend to use their education to make other people’s lives better? It turned out that it did not make any difference: the academics stopped to help just as often as the altruists. The researchers also wondered if it would make any difference if the students were asked to speak about the parable of the Good Samaritan as opposed to some other parable. They found that that did not make any difference either: the people who were on their way to speak about the Good Samaritan were no more likely to stop to offer help. In fact, the experiment showed that the only factor that made a difference was the student’s schedule. “The only thing that really mattered was whether the student was in a rush. Of the group that was, 10 percent stopped to help. Of the group who knew they had a few minutes to spare, 63 percent stopped.” (The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, p. 165)

I thought about this a lot, about theologians rushing past an injured man to give a talk about how important it is to help those in need. I thought about students who were so sure that their talk was very important, hurrying, maybe worrying that they were not properly prepared to talk about love, and your fellow man. I thought about how theology really isn’t all that important unless it touches our hearts, unless it really changes us. And more often than anything, I remembered that the sermon is not nearly as important as the person you walk past on the way to the church service.