“…It is not hard to see that there is this great imbalance and that things are not right. I know that, but for me I suppose it really hits home if I stop and think about this moment – because it is happening right now.
In the same moment you have a generation who are sitting around entertaining themselves watching reality television, which to be honest, is anything but real. While you have a child who is being prostituted behind closed doors and robbed of their innocence.
It is not fair that we can go about consuming every single material option that comes our way while the widow and the orphan are stripped of life’s basic dignities because they are victims of a conflict that simply is not theirs
It is not fair that there is a generation who is choking on their obesity while at the same time there are 30,000 children that will die today for lack of food.
It is not fair that we have no problem going about spending three or four dollars on what is basically glorified tap water in a bottle with a fancy label while we have entire communities that suffer at the hands of disease because the only water they have access to is foul an polluted.
It is not fair that we can sing and dance and jump around in our freedom and in our liberty while at the same time the salve remains captive out of sight and out of mind
It is not fair that we can sit and watch the evening news from the comfort of our living rooms and pity those who lived where the storm hit or where the ground shook or where the water rose and simply feel sorry for them and then change the channel and get on with supper.
Is it fair to walk past the homeless man and give him nothing in the assumption that he will spend it on booze or cigarettes or to suggest that he should go out and get a job? Who are we to judge the alcoholic or the prostitute or the addict or the criminal as if we are any better?
Who are we to forget the downtrodden or the oppressed or the marginalized while we go about chasing a dream?
We see this imbalance and we go “that is not right, that is not fair” but all too often that is all we do, because for us to do any more is actually going to cost us something.
And if that is where it ends, perhaps then it is fair to say that when we ignore the prostituted child we actually lend our hand to their abuse.
That when we ignore the widow and the orphan in their distress that we actually add to their pain.
When we ignore the slave who remains captive, that it is us who is entrapping them.
That when we forget the refugee, that it is us who is displacing them.
That when we choose not to help the poor and the needy, that we actually rob them.
Perhaps the only fair thing to say is that when we forsake the lives of others we actually forsake our own…”