The Crisis at Our Door

On August 7, 2025, Jessie Mobley Jr. fell asleep after eating a meal at a Houston steakhouse and was moved outside by employees, propped up with his belongings. The next morning, he was found dead on the sidewalk. Staff allegedly assumed he was homeless when they placed him on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. He was 34 years old, one week away from his 35th birthday.^[1]

The story is shocking, but perhaps what’s most disturbing is that it’s not entirely surprising. The restaurant staff didn’t call 911. They didn’t check on him. They simply removed what they perceived as an inconvenience from their establishment and went about their business. This wasn’t a split-second decision in a moment of panic; it was a calculated response that revealed something deeply troubling about the state of compassion in American culture. And the church, tragically, has not remained immune to this infection.

The Culture of Indifference

Jessie Mobley’s death is not an isolated incident; it’s symptomatic of a broader cultural shift. Over the past several decades, American society has increasingly moved toward a posture of self-protection and inconvenience-avoidance. The homeless are seen as eyesores rather than image-bearers. The mentally ill are problems to be managed rather than people to be helped. The vulnerable are invisible until they become inconvenient.

This shift manifests in countless ways: the elderly isolated in nursing facilities, rarely visited; the unhoused person passed by on the street corner without eye contact; the struggling single mother whose needs are met with judgment rather than help; the immigrant family treated with suspicion rather than hospitality. In each case, the underlying message is the same: “Your suffering is your problem, not mine.”

What drives this cultural indifference? Several factors converge:

The cult of efficiency. In a culture obsessed with productivity and optimization, anything that slows progress becomes an obstacle to eliminate. Compassion takes time. It requires stopping, assessing needs, and engaging with another person’s pain. These things interrupt the smooth flow of business and life.

The fear of liability. Americans have become so lawsuit-conscious that fear of legal consequences often overrides moral obligation. Better to do nothing than to risk being held responsible for trying to help.

The erosion of community. As Robert Putnam documented in his influential work Bowling Alone, American society has seen a dramatic decline in social capital and community connections over the past several decades.^[2] When people are strangers to one another, it’s easier to ignore their suffering. Compassion flourishes in community; indifference thrives in isolation.

The dehumanization of “the other.” When society categorizes people—by economic status, race, housing situation, or any other marker—it becomes easier to dismiss their humanity. Once someone is reduced to a category (”homeless,” “addict,” “illegal”), their individual worth fades from view.

The result is a culture where compassion has become optional, conditional, and increasingly rare.

The Church’s Infection

The tragedy is that this cultural indifference has infiltrated the church. Despite clear biblical mandates to care for the vulnerable, many Christians and churches have adopted the world’s posture toward those in need.

This manifests in several ways:

Viewing compassion as a program rather than a practice. Churches create ministries to “serve the poor” while individual believers walk past the needy on their way to and from church services. Compassion becomes something delegated to a committee rather than embodied in daily life.

Judging worthiness. Christians have adopted society’s tendency to divide people into “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. Questions arise: “Are they really in need, or just taking advantage?” “Did their own choices lead to this situation?” “Are they trying to help themselves?” Such questions, while sometimes relevant for stewardship, can become excuses to withhold compassion that Scripture never permits us to withhold.

Prioritizing comfort over calling. Like the restaurant staff who found it easier to remove Jessie Mobley than to help him, churches and Christians often prioritize their own comfort and convenience over the needs of others. Ministry to the marginalized is messy, time-consuming, and emotionally taxing. It’s much easier to write a check than to engage personally with suffering.

Adopting political rather than gospel-centered responses. Increasingly, Christians respond to issues of poverty and vulnerability primarily through political ideology rather than biblical compassion. Debates about government assistance programs replace conversations about personal and corporate responsibility to care for those in need. The result is that political positions become substitutes for actual compassion.

Fear-based self-protection. Like the broader culture, Christians have become afraid—afraid of being taken advantage of, afraid of inviting danger into their lives, afraid of the complications that come with genuine engagement with the suffering. This fear masquerades as wisdom but is often simply faithlessness.

The church was meant to be the place where the world’s indifference is confronted and contradicted. Instead, too often, it has become a place where that indifference is baptized and justified.

A Question of Identity

At the heart of this crisis is a question of identity. Who is the church, and what is she called to be and do in the world?

Scripture is clear that the church is to be a community marked by love—love for God and love for neighbor. Jesus said the world would know His disciples by their love for one another (John 13:35). The apostle John went further, stating that anyone who claims to love God but hates his brother is a liar (1 John 4:20). Love, in the biblical sense, is not merely an emotion; it is active, sacrificial, and directed toward the good of others.

When the church loses compassion, it loses its identity. When believers become indistinguishable from the culture in their treatment of the vulnerable, the church’s witness is compromised. The gospel becomes just another self-improvement philosophy, and Christianity becomes just another social club.

The indifference that led to Jessie Mobley’s death is the same indifference that has crept into many churches and Christian hearts. It’s the indifference that walks past the homeless person, that scrolls past the news of suffering, that gives lip service to caring while doing nothing of substance. It’s the indifference that assumes someone else will help, that someone else is responsible, that someone else should care.

But Scripture offers no such escape. The call to compassion is not optional, not delegable, not conditional. It is central to what it means to follow Jesus.

The Way Forward

The church stands at a crossroads. Will it continue down the path of cultural conformity, adopting the world’s indifference toward the vulnerable? Or will it recover its calling to be a community of compassion that reflects the heart of God?

The first step is acknowledging the problem. The church must confess that she has, in many ways, failed to be the compassionate community that Scripture calls it to be. This confession must move beyond generalities to specific acknowledgment of ways that comfort, fear, and cultural conformity have replaced biblical compassion.

The second step is repentance—a genuine turning away from indifference and toward the heart of God for the vulnerable. This repentance must be more than words; it must be embodied in changed attitudes, priorities, and actions.

But what does biblical compassion actually look like? How does it differ from cultural ideas of charity or social work? And how can churches and individual believers recover and embody this kind of compassion in practical ways?

These are the questions we’ll address in Part 2 of this series. For now, consider this: If Jessie Mobley, a homeless man, had collapsed outside a church instead of a restaurant, would the response have been any different? Would believers have called 911, or would they have made the same assumptions and taken the same actions as the restaurant staff? The answer to that question reveals much about the state of compassion in the American church—and the urgency of the crisis at our door.

For Reflection:

● In what ways have you adopted cultural indifference toward the vulnerable?

● What fears or priorities prevent you from showing compassion?

● If someone in distress appeared at your church this Sunday, what would happen?

In Part 2, we’ll explore what biblical compassion looks like, examine Scripture’s teaching on care for the vulnerable, and consider practical steps for recovering compassion in our churches and lives.

[1] “Parents say son would be alive if Houston restaurant staff had called 911,” Houston Chronicle, Aug. 30, 2025. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/jessie-mobley-death-restaurant-presumed-homeless-21018196.php. Accessed October 13, 2025.

[2] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 15-28.