EDITORIAL: Do Good Samaritans climb Everest?

Posted: 6/09/06

EDITORIAL:
Do Good Samaritans climb Everest?

David Sharp, a 34-year-old British engineer, collapsed and died on Mount Everest last month.

The Associated Press described Sharp’s death as “shocking, an apparent display of preening callousness.” Sir Edmund Hillary, the first climber to conquer Everest in 1953, insisted Sharp’s death was “horrifying.”

Sharp reached the summit, climbing alone. But as he descended through the “death zone”—almost 28,000 feet above sea level—his lungs failed to filter enough oxygen out of the thin, frigid air, and his systems began to shut down.

The most shocking factor in Sharp’s death is that 40 climbers apparently hiked past him as he sat dying in a small snow cave. At least one group stopped to give him oxygen. But climbers decided he was so near death they couldn’t help him. So, they pressed on.

Veterans of the world’s premier peaks say mountain-climbing ethics have changed. Years ago, only elite, experienced climbers would venture there, and an injured or ill climber would be abandoned only if rescue would unreasonably imperil other lives. Today, mountain trails teem with inexperienced wealthy adventurers who pay small fortunes to be guided to the peak. Consequently, some climbers are ill-equipped to take on the ascent, and most others don’t have the skills to rescue them if they get in trouble. Also, the guides, who possess skills, sense greater urgency to lead paying clients to the summit than to help a climber who probably brought the calamity on himself anyway.

“If you’re going to go to Everest, … you have to accept the responsibility that you may end up doing something that’s not very ethically nice,” Lydia Bradley, the first woman to scale Everest without supplemental oxygen, told the Associated Press. “You’re in a different world.”

A different world, indeed. Flatlanders can hardly conceive a world where healthy people hike past a dying person and fail to stop and save a life.

But although the exotic conditions surrounding Sharp’s death command our attention, they’re neither new nor exceptional. In fact, they’re ancient and universal. Jesus described a hapless traveler, mugged on a rural road and left for dead. Supposedly good folks—the kind you’d expect to stop and render aid—avoided the suffering man and moved along as quickly as possible. Finally, a Samaritan—the kind of person you’d think would hate the poor guy—stopped to help him, carried him to safety and paid the bill for his recuperation. The only difference between Jesus’ parable and David Sharp’s story is that Samaritans apparently don’t climb the world’s highest peaks.

When we hear a story about such “preening callousness,” we’re tempted to shake our heads in disgust and wonder what the world’s coming to. But I wonder how many times supposedly fine Christians walk right past spiritually struggling climbers who gasp for life-giving grace, only to continue our ascent toward an intensely personal mountain-top experience with Jesus.

Unlike Everest, the spiritual trek through life is not optional, nor is it only for the elite. Everybody climbs. But like Everest, this journey is difficult and at times dangerous. Look around you, and you’ll see all kinds of people struggling to carry on, deprived of soul vitality and defeated by the altitude of their problems and the steep terrain of their circumstances. They need help.

Sharp’s death on Everest raises a couple of issues that correlate to Christian duty in the face of spiritual struggle:

• Many climbers who walked past Sharp didn’t help him because they weren’t skilled enough. Most of them weren’t trained and experienced enough to be there themselves, much less lead an at-risk fellow traveler back to safety. How many Baptists know so little about their faith and the basic tenets of Christianity that they can’t provide spiritual aid and comfort to a struggling soul?

• Successful climbers stick together and help each other. They monitor each other, encourage each other, share their experience, food, oxygen and supplies. When one of them gets in trouble, they care enough to put themselves at risk in order to help the one who struggles. This reminds me of church at its best: We travel this journey of life together, because we know we won’t make it alone.

How many David Sharps shiver spiritually as we travel to church? How many could we save if we were compassionate enough to (a) train to be stronger than we need to be for ourselves so we can be strong enough for them and (b) sacrifice our personal goals for their eternal good?