Dallas Koperski: The Good Haitian

Last night a man was brought in to the hospital by a Haitian hospital volunteer. The man had been brutally beaten and left on the side of the street. Upon arrival to the hospital he was taken outside to be cleaned before being taken into the ER. When I found him out in the gravel behind the hospital, he was completely naked, emaciated, delirious, unable to communicate, drool and snot running down his face, jagged wounds all over his body, a ligature scar around his neck where he had been hung, a broken jaw, and maggots crawling out of deep lacerations on his head. The scene was shocking. I have never seen someone so completely stripped of their humanity. The staff did their best to wash him, then gave him clothes and brought him into the hospital for more treatment. Thinking about the whole situation afterwards, I realized that the Haitian volunteer that brought him in to the hospital was the Good Samaritan. He found the man, a stranger half dead on the side of the road, likely passed over by hundreds of other people, and had compassion on him. That realization made me question whether I would have done the same. It is easy to listen to the story of the Good Samaritan and look down on the priest and Levite who passed the traveler by. We automatically assume that they must have been inherently bad people, and that ourselves being so Christ-like, would have stopped and helped the traveler. To be honest, I don’t think many Christians would have stopped to help this man. He was delirious, appeared to be almost dead, and was not asking for help. It would have been much easier to pass him by and think, “wow, what an unfortunate situation, I feel so sorry for these Haitian people,” then keep walking. In the end, I can only pray that someday I will be as Christ-like as the Haitian volunteer.