Who is our Watchman?

My thoughts after reading Ezekiel 33:1-9.

Who is our watchman now? It seems like a question that is trying to move responsibility from ourselves onto another. A response similar in nature to the question that was asked of Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” His reply to that was that anyone we encounter is our neighbor. I think the same approach could be taken to the question of “Who is our watchman?” Everyone is each other's watchman (or watchwoman). If someone sees some incoming danger approaching, it is their responsibility to give warning. You are my watchman. I am your watchman. We, as followers of Christ, are the world's watchmen. It is not a responsibility that we can shirk off and give to someone else.

We see in this passage in Ezekiel that sharing the gospel is our responsibility. If we do not share, then the responsibility for the lack of others being disciples is on our hands. We will receive the punishment that the person that did not become a disciple will receive if we do not warn them.

Consider this story told by Bernard L. Brown, Jr., former president of the Kennestone Regional Health Care System in the state of Georgia.

Brown once worked in a hospital where a patient knocked over a cup of water, which spilled on the floor beside the patient's bed. The patient was afraid he might slip on the water if he got out of the bed, so he asked a nurse's aide to mop it up. The patient didn't know it, but the hospital policy said that small spills were the responsibility of the nurse's aides while large spills were to be mopped up by the hospital's housekeeping group.

The nurse's aide decided the spill was a large one and she called the housekeeping department. A housekeeper arrived and declared the spill a small one. An argument followed.

"It's not my responsibility," said the nurse's aide, "because it's a large puddle." The housekeeper did not agree. "Well, it's not mine," she said, "the puddle is too small."

The exasperated patient listened for a time, then took a pitcher of water from his night table and poured the whole thing on the floor. "Is that a big enough puddle now for you two to decide?" he asked. It was, and that was the end of the argument.

We oftentimes do not like to take responsibility for our own actions let alone the actions of others. But the Bible is clear that we are responsible for the failure of others when it comes to whether they follow Christ or not if we have not done our duty as a watchman.

“What a sharp contrast with a scene that occurred on a New York street nearly two decades before. Kitty Genovese was slowly and brutally stabbed to death. At least thirty-eight of her neighbors witnessed the attack and heard her screams. In the course of the 90-minute episode, her attacker was actually frightened away, then he returned to finish her off. Yet not once during that period did any neighbor assist her, or even telephone the police. The implications of this tragic event shocked America, and it stimulated two young psychologists, Darly and Latane, to study the conditions under which people are or are not willing to help others in an emergency. In essence, they concluded that responsibility is diffused. The more people present in an emergency situation, the less likely it is that any one of them will offer help. This is popularly called the "bystander effect." (In the actual experiment, when one bystander was present, 85 percent offered help. When two were present, 62 percent offered help. When five were present, then it decreased to 31 percent.)”

From the book Social Psychology in the Seventies

We, as watchmen, suffer from the bystander effect. We think it is the person sitting in the pew behind us, beside us, across the aisle, or standing in the pulpit that is responsible. We constantly struggle to place the responsibility on someone else, but each one of us is responsible. Let us take seriously the call to be each other's watchman.