Uncomfortable thoughts

Maggi Dawn’s blog pointed me at this article by Mike Todd of Waving or Drowning? It makes good reading – some profound thoughts. But it’s also disturbing because of the cost it implies that we must pay – that issues like the tsunami over Christmas demand of us not charity but justice. Charity is easy: a one-off donation that salves our conscience with the knowledge that we’ve “done something”. The real problem remains, however. The real problem is ongoing and lasting; it will take years, decades even, before anything resembling normality returns to these areas, and some areas may never return to how they were (there are islands where there are now no inhabitants because they were all removed after everything was destroyed, and to which the people are unlikely ever to come back).

Worse than this, why do we react so strongly to the tsunami but seem not to care about the 100,000 people who’ve died in Iraq? The families who were destroyed, the children left homeless, the heritage ground under the tracks of American and European tanks? Why do we seem not to care about the children dying of entirely preventable diseases in Africa – one child dies every 6 seconds from drinking dirty water! Why do we not care about the implacable conflict between Israel and Palestine, which keeps thousands without even the right to the water that flows on their land and continues to claim the lives of many on both sides?

Charity helps a little, and calms our consciences. Justice demands that we change ourselves, that we get involved, that we spend our money but, even more, that we spend our time and effort to rectify the things that are wrong. Worse even than that, it demands that we get involved in politics – that we try and change the systems that keep the poor poor and the rich rich.

“When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint, but when I ask why people should be hungry, they call me a communist.”
Bolivian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara
“If you see injustice and say nothing, you have taken the side of the oppressor.”
South African Archbishop Desmund Tutu
“You Christians have vested interests in unjust structures, which create victims, to whom you then can pour out your hearts in charity.”
Karl Marx

What do we do in the face of disaster? Do we cope, give generously, weep for the dead and the living? Or do we get out of our comfortable chairs and do something?

What can I do? What will I do? I don’t know but, faced with this challenge, I must do something – and keep on searching for justice.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 11:07am on 28 January 2005
Category: Faith, Life, Politics, Struggling