The Ultimate Question
On July 27 a Pakistani porter, Mohammed Hassan, fell from a bottleneck path on K2, the world’s second-highest mountain. He was assisting other climbers as they made their way up to the summit. His injuries left him in critical condition, and he needed immediate help, but none came, or I should say dozens of people came but walked right past him, eager to reach the summit less than 500 feet ahead. No one stopped.
K2, the world’s second-highest mountain
Norwegian climber Kristin Harila and her Sherpa guide apparently stepped over the stricken man in an attempt to set a new speed record for the ascent. She said that nothing could be done for Mohammed and that no one was to blame for his death. Two other climbers that day, Austrian Wilhelm Steindl and German Philip Flaeming, disputed her story. A drone took a video recording of the event which, in their view, showed that Kristin, as well as dozens of other climbers, passed by Hassan.
Mohammed Hassan
Steindl said that if the injured man had been a Westerner, everything would have been done to save him. “I’m just saying,” Steindl said, “there was no rescue operation initiated and that’s really very, very tragic because that’s actually the most normal thing one would do in a situation like that.”
As I read the story of Mohammed’s death, I thought of the story of the Good Samaritan in the Gospels. A Jewish man had been beaten and robbed and left for dead along a treacherous trail. A Jewish priest and then a Levite passed by the half dead man and continued walking. Finally, a Samaritan came across the injured man and stopped to offer aid, probably saving the man’s life.
When Jesus told this story, Jews and Samaritans were bitter enemies. The Jews considered Samaritans to be pagans of the worst kind, enemies of the faith. And, of course, Samaritans had no love whatsoever for Jews. Yet, the Samaritan in Jesus’s story puts aside his differences and helps the Jewish man. It was an act of virtue and selflessness.
What precipitated this story was a question by a religious academic who asked Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life. In other words, the scholar of religion wanted to know, “What do I have to do to spend eternity with God?”
That’s a very important question, isn’t it? We all would like to know what it is we must do in order to spend eternity with God.
Jesus responds to the man’s question with the story of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10: 30-37). Simply put, if you want to go to heaven and receive everlasting life, according to Jesus, show mercy to those in need of help, even persons from a different religion or racial background. Live a life of virtue, thinking of others before thinking of yourself, and you will be well on your way to the Pearly Gates.
I wasn’t there on the K2 summit the day Mohammed Hassan died. Honestly, though, I struggle with the climbers who were so intent on reaching the summit that a human life was secondary to their ambition. Had Mohammed been an American would they have stopped? Had the injured man been one of their family members would they have stopped? I think they would have. I believe that if the fallen man had been a close relative, the climbers would have halted their climb and done everything in their power to save their loved one.
I wonder sometimes if humanity hasn’t entered a moral and ethical Dark Age. While science and technology have advanced almost beyond belief, the moral character of humanity apparently has slid backward.
To try and assess blame on Western culture’s downward spiral to any one thing would probably not be very productive or helpful. It more than likely is a combination of many things happening over a period of several decades or more that has resulted in our loss of human value and virtue.
One thing I’m convinced of, though, we too often see other people only as a means to an end. For far too many of us, other people serve merely to satisfy our desires or help us carry out a task or to make our lives better. In other words, we use human beings to advance our own personal goals. When people are thought of only as instruments that allow us to accomplish whatever it is we want to get done, then we lose the sacred significance of every human being—a person, every person, has been created in the image and likeness of God and, thus, has infinite value.
What would I have done if I had been one of the climbers and saw an injured Mohammed Hassan lying in the snow? Would I have stopped? Would I have put my ambition aside and aborted a climb that I had worked so hard to achieve?
What would you have done?
The way I understand Jesus, our eternal destiny rests on how we would have responded. My guess is, in the next day or two, perhaps a week or so at best, we will all have a chance to answer the question. We may not be on K2, but there are hurting people everywhere! How will you answer the ultimate question?
