Where were we when people learned to hate…?

Abraham Heschel asks, “Where were we when people learned to hate in the days of starvation?…We have failed to fight for right, for justice, for goodness; as a result we must fight against wrong, against injustice, against evil. (“No Time for Neutrality,” Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, 210)

Twice in the last week, I have listened to people who have endured more hatred and injustice as young children than I expect to experience ever.  I am grateful they speak out, and grieved that we do not seem to learn, to care, to ask why human rights violations persist or to work to stop the violence and hatred.

Charlene Schiff participates in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHHM) Memory Project.  The 82-year old is the only living survivor among the 5,000 Jews in the town of Horochow who were imprisoned by the Nazis in 1939.  She was 9 years old.  Escaping the prison ghetto before the Nazis liquidated the camp, she lived in forests, sleeping during the day and foraging at night under the cover of darkness.  Ms. Schiff lived in these conditions for more than two years.  You can read more of her recollections at the Memory Project website.

Michael Kuany is in his early 30s now.  One of the Lost Boys of Sudan, he escaped his burning village in southern Sudan when he was 6 years old. I didn’t mistype, not 16 (sixteen) but 6(six).  The age when young American boys are throwing footballs, building with legos, fishing and playing video games. Separated from his family, Mr. Kuany joined other children he knew and walked to “safety” in a refugee camp in Ethiopia where he lived for four years.  When war came to Ethiopia, he fled again, forging the Gilo River and trekking hundreds of miles to Kenya where he lived for ten more years in a refugee camp. There he was educated by U.N. aid workers and eventually had an opportunity to come to the United States for additional education.  He now has his undergraduate and master’s degrees and has established a nonprofit, Rebuild Sudan.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to hear Paul Rusesabagina, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide whose story is told in the film “Hotel Rwanda.”  He tells his story in the book No Ordinary Man. Rusesabagina challenges us to live up to the world’s unfulfilled promise of “Never again.” But the reality is that we do allow these atrocities to happen. Again and again. 

My friend and seminary classmate Christine Cowan records her experiences as an Ecumenical Accompanier in Palestine with the World Council of Churches; there she bears witness to the human rights violations that happen every day in an occupied land. 

Why don’t we learn? Why don’t we care? Why don’t we ask why these horrors continue to happen? Why don’t we work to stop the violence?

Do we think it will never happen here? Do we not believe that the people in these far-away countries are God’s children? Or do we just not care? Do we believe their pain doesn’t affect my day, my commute, my family, my livelihood? Do we believe that there is no relationship between their scarcity and my abundance? Their war and our peace?

Where were we when people learned to hate?

We are a nation living with choices

Bishop Ntambo from the Democratic Republic of Congo opened the 2011 Lake Junaluska Peace Conference telling us stories.  While he told his stories with humor and grace, he poignantly illustrated how in the U.S., we have abundance we don’t even recognize because it is so woven into the fabric of our lives.

Sparkling or flat, bottled or tap, filtered or not, flavored or not, with ice or not. Here we can rattle off a half-dozen choices of what kind of water we may want to drink while in Niger “80 percent of child deaths are linked to lack of access to clean water and sanitation.” (2011 Hunger Report, Bread for the World, 19)

Cardiologist, internist, orthopedist, pediatrician, obstetrician, surgeon, oncologist, psychiatrist, dentist…In the U.S., at least the insured have opportunities to choose the doctor whose specialty will best address their needs; Bishop Ntambo related that people in his country may walk 20 – 50 miles to find aspirin and students who complete high school may be doctors because there are so few treatments and so little medicine to learn.

Private, charter, public, preschool, home school, tutors, colleges, universities, community colleges, trade schools, online degree programs, in-state, out-of-state, full-time, part-time, evening, commuter, residential, distance…in the U.S., our children have choices about what kind of education they want to pursue and where they want to study.  In sub-Saharan Africa, only 70 percent of school-age children attend primary school.

And these are the big choices we make every day: food and water, healthcare, education.  Walk down a grocery store aisle and survey the array of cereal boxes, brands of toothpaste or flavors of salad dressings.  Have you read through a Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts' menu recently?  Surely we can recognize how we are blessed when we have sixteen choices for even the most trivial items.

God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 reminds us that blessing is both a gift and a responsibility:

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

What blinds us to seeing how we are blessed? 

How are we being called to be a blessing in return?

Are you being called to take action?
This week, senators likely will be voting on State and Foreign Operations budget. Senate State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has argued strongly for a fully-funded foreign aid budget: “At a time when we’re broke at home, it remains important to remain engaged in the world and provide assistance to those who would live in peace with us.”  This is funding for programs that alleviate poverty and hunger in developing countries and for programs that fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and chronic hunger - programs that are saving lives today.  If you'd like to know more about how you can become involved, visit Bread for the World.

It’s all in the numbers

In Exodus from Hunger, David Beckmann shares the success stories from seven countries (Brazil, China, Ghana, Mexico, Mozambique, Sri Lanka, UK) who have made strides in reducing hunger, poverty and inequality in the last twenty years.  The stories told by the numbers are brought into even sharper relief when we include the global, and domestic (U.S.), figures.  

Poverty is one of the most significant obstacles to addressing many social issues.  The international poverty line has been defined as living on less than $1 a day. ¹  Mozambique has reduced the percentage of people living in poverty from 70% to 50% (2006), and Ghana has reduced the number of people living in poverty even more dramatically, from 50% to 30%. Despite their success, these numbers are still significantly higher that the global rate of 18% (2004).

Primary School Education is another of the Millenium Development Goals (MDG).  China has made education a priority and 80% of children now finish primary school in China.  While primary school is compulsory here in the U.S., worldwide UNICEF estimated that around 115 million children of primary school age did not attend school.(2005)  This figure is approximately 82% of primary age schoolchildren.²

Infant Mortality measures “the number of deaths of infants under one year old in a given year per 1,000 live births in the same year.”³  Committed to strong social programs, Sri Lanka has one of the lowest rates of childbirth deaths (9.7 per 1000) in the developing world and have expanded assistance for child nutrition triumphed despite civil war and high poverty rates. 

Political Will contributes significantly to a government’s success in finding solutions that address hunger and poverty. Despite a wide disparity in Brazil where the richest 20% owns 61% of wealth (in contrast to 46.4% of the wealth in the U.S.), the country has engaged in “a national solidarity movement” Fome Zero that balances accountability for education and medical care with contributions by its citizens toward eradicating hunger in Brazil. ⁴

Beckmann emphasizes these countries as case studies that demonstrate “healthy societies are more likely to achieve sustained progress against hunger and poverty” and point to the importance of political and government involvement in reducing poverty.  (Beckmann, 59)   

So, as we here in the U.S. approach Election Day 2011 and enter the next twelve months of campaigning and politicking, what goals and commitments will we ask our leaders to make in this arena?

¹ World Resources Institute http://www.wri.org/chart/population-living-less-than-1-per-day-1981-2004 , accessed Nov. 5, 2011.

² UNICEF, http://www.unicef.org/mdg/education.html , accessed Nov. 5, 2011.

³ CIA Factbook, CIA, Washington, D.C. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html , accessed Nov. 5, 2011.

⁴ NationMaster  http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_inc_dis_ric_20-economy-income-distribution-richest-20, accessed Nov. 5, 2011 owned by Rapid Intelligence.