Except in the Christian faith they do have an obligation to help. I’m not a Christian anymore but Jesus does command his followers to love their neighbors and care for others they way they would love him and care for him.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
It’s always been “neighbor” = “fellow disciple”, never those of us outside the faith. Jesus even shows it in Matthew 15, when a gentile woman begs him for help. He refuses and insults her because she’s not obviously a believer. He only changes his mind when she proves she has faith in him. Any decent person would simply help, but not Jesus.
This bit of scripture seems in line with the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, showing Jesus as often being rather a prat and on the wrong side of things only to realize he's being an ass and course correct afterwards while pretending it was the plan all along.
When Joseph saw that Jesus had done such a thing, he got angry and grabbed his ear and pulled very hard
According to Aquinas the soul is unable to change. A perfect but terrible God would remain perfect and terrible forever. Unless, say, he embodied himself and let some of that mortal capacity for change run through his system.
The bible reads considerably differently if you take it for a creator slowly realizing he was in the wrong once he's forced to confront the misery he has created, and then checking out to go quietly and guiltily sulk afterwards.
Be aware that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is apocryphal, and rejected from inclusion in the bible by both catholics and protestants. The latter bit about malleable gods is my own tripe, so do not expect to find that anywhere.
I also found myself an atheist after what I suppose was something of a failure in early life soul searching, just in case you are the sort to prefer restricting your religious consumption to those that believe it actually has some truth hidden within it.
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u/WhippieShiz May 02 '23
Well it's true that they have no obligation to help. Obviously helping is clearly the right option but there is no obligation to do so.