Allison McFadden (J.D. 2026, Cornell), Ignoring Drowning Babies (originally published in The Christian Lawyer (Spring 2025)): 

At some point in their first year torts class, law students read the “drowning baby” case: if a bystander walks by a baby drowning in a puddle, he can shield his eyes and walk on by. They learn that at common law, there is no affirmative duty to help someone in need if you did not engender that need. Some students are appalled. Some recount the case over dinner, as entertainment. Most are indifferent.

Besides pointing out that a few states have overridden this default rule by statute, the American legal education is content to stop there. Seldom is it also discussed that the American legal system evolved with a sense of its own limits, that jurists constrained opportunities for liability because they believed that a democratic society required a limited form of government. The point was to make room for the moral will of man and his other associations, like the church.

For Christians who follow the divine law of God, the bar is much higher than what the American legal system requires. In a scenario that parallels the “drowning baby” case, Jesus tells the story of a Samaritan who comes across a Jewish man beaten, robbed, and left lying on the side of the road. The Samaritan does not shield his eyes. He heaps the man onto his donkey, treats his wounds, and pays for his bed in an inn. In God’s Kingdom, Jesus reminds his followers, there is an affirmative duty to help one’s neighbor.

Modern readers are tempted to trivialize the teachings of Jesus. Bible studies on that passage in Matthew descend into discussions of what the scope of our generosity actually ought to be, whether our “neighbor” is really any hurting person we pass on the road. Surely God did not mean that we were to give our wallet’s contents to every homeless person we pass on the sidewalk. The verbal sayings of Jesus are so radical we subconsciously dismiss them as aspirational.

Of course, the divine law of God is encapsulated not “merely” in the teachings of Jesus, but in the entire gamut of his laws, testimonies, guidance, ways, and in the man himself. In seeking to understand the gravity of Jesus’ teaching in the “Good Samaritan” parable, then, we might read back in time. In fact, in the law given to the ancient Israelites, there is one riffing on the theme of passing by someone in need: “If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him” (Exodus 23:4).

The Mosaic law was, among other things, a kind of “incarnation”—God’s infinite law in finite legal terms, crystallized for an ancient Near East community. Thus a “Good Samaritan” principle in that time and place entailed the most common situation in an agrarian society where someone might need the help of a stranger: when engaged in the laborious, dangerous task of moving heavy loads with his livestock, potentially stranded miles from home. And the duty of the Good Samaritan was as strict as it could get: he was required to help not just anyone, but everyone—including one “who hated him.” …

[The legal] profession disarms us attorneys from faithfully obeying God’s commands. Why? God commands radical other-centeredness, and in this profession we rehearse patterns of self-interestedness.

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