Northern Ethiopian soldiers sweep through villages, killing all men, women and children they see, using machetes and guns. They burn and plunder, leveling those villages to the ground. Those few that escape go west to Darfur, where, if they are fortunate enough to have survived the perilous journey on foot, they live in squalid concentration camps. Their blessing for having survived the initial onslaught is to now watch their children die in hunger and to die in painful disease. Is this justice? Three hundred children in a Phillipine village go to school one morning. A mudslide triggered by illegal deforestration buries the village, completely destroying it, and burying the children alive under ten feet of suffocating mud. Is this justice? Palestinians have their land taken away from them and given to Zionists to create an Isreali state. When they protest their displacement, and proclaim their right to have their land and their own state, they are crushed by the Israelis, who have the backing of the world powers. Is this justice? Homeowners in Cincinnati have their homes confiscated by the city government, to be leveled so that a private developer can build high rises there and make a lot of money. Is this justice? Those New Orleans residents who were the poorest are those hardest hit by the hurricane and the floods. Their homes and entire precinct are reduced to a stinking garbage dump. Everything they possessed of value is gone. They have to start life all over again with nothing. Is this justice? Show us a world where justice reigns supreme and we will show you a world off in some other galaxy or universe. It isn’t here. This is a world which is frequently unjust and often cruel.
One of the problems is that we are terribly complaisant about injustice. If it is happening in Darfur, Palestine, Cincinnati, the Phillipines or New Orleans, and that is not where we live, we don’t care very much. It is someone else’s problem and someone else’s fault. We don’t stretch out our hands to those who have suffered injustice and offer them whatever help we can give. We are also a bit gun-shy. The guy who steps in to break up a fight is often the one who gets hurt the worst. Why should we step into someone else’s dung when we have enough to protect our own welfare and possessions? It is comforting to know that wherever the trouble is, it is somewhere else and not at our front door. We survive by protecting what we have and not trying to fight everyone else’s fight for them. We can’t take care of the whole world, you know.
The other major problem with injustice is that we accept it fatalistically. We believe that if bad things happen to good people somewhere else, it is because it is part of God’s grand plan. We don’t understand that grand plan and don’t understand why these other people should have to suffer, but know that it has a cause and a reason, so we should just let it be. We can’t prevent these awful things from happening, so we should just let our God do his work, make these injustices and calamities whenever and however He wishes, and watch to see what happens. Maybe some day later we will understand why that particular suffering had to occur. The Lord moves in strange and mysterious ways. Those ways may seem unjust to us, but surely they are for a reason, even though we can’t see what that reason may be. Eventually our loving God will make everything all right. We are sure of it.
We have our heads stuck in the sand on both counts, don’t we? Human suffering anywhere is our suffering too. Inhumanities allowed to occur without resistance in one place spread to other places. If we do not respond to the suffering of others, we cannot expect them to respond when it is our turn to suffer. “Never ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.” We are all in this together. If we know someone else has sustained grief and loss, and there is some way we can help, we need to do so. Hurray for those volunteers who leave their regular jobs and livelihoods to go to Louisiana and give their time and effort. Hurray for the military of another country who go to the Phillipines to dig through mud with their hands. Hurray for any nation that is willing to stop the genocide in Darfur. Injustice and loss anywhere is our injustice too.
It is a paradox. Those who believe in a personal God who is in charge of all human affairs, all events in this world and all events in the universe, leave it up to this mythical God to take care of these messes. You would expect these highly religious people to be highly moral, ethical and compassionate –but they often are not. They seem less concerned because it is in their belief system that their God plans and conducts these cruel injustices for a reason. All they have to do is sit back and watch how their mythical superpower is going to eventually turn things around and make everyone happy. It isn’t so, folks. That is a cruel hoax.
On the other hand, those who believe that our only God is the Laws of Chance, which don’t care about humans, and have no plan for our future, know full well that it is up to us to make this a better world. We have to come to the aid of those who have suffered loss, and to always stand up to injustice whenever we see it. No one else, of any deity description, or of any power, is going to make things right some day in the future. If we don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. It is up to us to create a loving and compassionate society.
Personal God religions sap our moral strength. Deist religions free us from that slavery, and allow us to know clearly that we must love our neighbors as ourselves. We are all in this together, black, brown, yellow, red, white, spotted, short, tall, skinny, fat, dumb, smart, heterosexual, homosexual, young, old, poor, rich, loved, unloved, north, south, east, west, this nation, that nation, this genes, that genes. Humans of all descriptions must remedy injustice. There is no God who will do it for us.