Most of us worry about the sins we commit. Fewer of us stop to consider the good we never did. In this episode, discover why indifference is not neutral, and what Jesus said about the people who walked past someone bleeding on the road.

It was 4 degrees in Buffalo on Christmas Eve when Sha'Kyra Aughtry heard screaming outside her window. She looked out and saw a man stumbling in the snow. His name was Joey White. He was 64, developmentally disabled, and had wandered away from his group home in the middle of one of the worst blizzards in the city's history. His hands were encased in ice.

She brought him inside. She called 911. Nobody came. She called the National Guard. They put her on a list.

Sha'Kyra later said she had to talk herself into opening the door that night. She wasn't sure it was safe. She didn't know the man. But she opened it anyway. And because she did, he's alive.

That decision, the choice to stop rather than pull the curtain and go back to bed, is exactly what Jesus was describing in Luke 10 when he told the story of the Good Samaritan. A man is beaten and left half dead on the road. A priest comes along, sees him, and crosses to the other side. A Temple assistant does the same. Then a Samaritan, someone the original audience would have written off entirely, stops, kneels down, and does what it takes to get the man to safety.

Jesus didn't hold up the priest and the Temple assistant as villains. They weren't cruel men. They were busy men with reasons to keep moving. And he held them accountable anyway.

That's the part most of us don't sit with long enough. Indifference is not neutral. Seeing a need and walking past it is a choice, and James 4:17 names that choice plainly: it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.

This episode takes an close look at the sin of omission, the good we never did, the person we never reached, the moment we let pass because it wasn't convenient. It's a more uncomfortable category of sin than most, because it doesn't feel like anything. It just feels like a normal day.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• Why Jesus treated the inaction of the priest and Temple assistant as a moral failure, not a neutral non-event
• What James 4:17 says about the sin of knowing what you should do and choosing not to do it
• One concrete step you can take this week to stop walking past the person you've been meaning to reach

Indifference is a choice. And so is stopping.

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