Earlier today I was reading about Irena Sendler being honoured by the Polish senate and it got me to thinking about something I've often thought about, but never actually articulated my view on: the nature of goodness.
Mrs. Sendler, I believe, is a Roman Catholic. Yet she risked being shot, along with her family, to save the lives of roughly 2,500 Jewish children. These were not her people, but they were people in need, and she helped them, though it meant that she could be killed. And she nearly was. She ended up being tortured and sentenced to death, but was saved, and continued to help save children whilst in hiding.
Today, roughly sixty years later, there is another genocide going on in Darfur. There, the Fur, the Zaghawa, and the Masalit ethnic groups are being targeted. These people are being killed, raped, their homes being looted. Some of them make it to refugee camps, but conditions aren't really steller there either. A lot of them starve there, as they're just not getting the help they need and deserve. (According to a message I recieved from Sen. Bill Frist, via the Save Darfur Coalition, foreign aid workers are actually being attacked, making efforts to help Darfuri peoples even more difficult.)
Over 400,000 people have died so far; about 2.5 million people are displaced. How many more people have to suffer before the world will listen?
I mean, these people are real people with real lives, with families, with children. They deserve to have hobbies, and jobs, and fun, and come home to loved ones at the end of the day. They don't deserve to die like this. No one deserves to die like this. And I'm appalled that the world, as a whole, isn't doing more to save them. We're all at fault. Every rich nation -- nations that could help, but just don't -- that turned their back on them should be ashamed. I think that perhaps the world just doesn't care.
But they should.
I live in Alabama, and a lot of times, you'll hear someone say "he's not a Christian; he drinks" or "she's not a Christian; she's a slut". But you know what? Being a good person is something that transcends religion, background, politics, or any other thing we use to put lables on people. Being a good person means living your life in a good way and doing the right thing. That's all it means. A person can call themself a Christian, a Hindu, a Jew, a Muslim, a Taoist, or any other religious or philosophical lable...but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you say you are, or which way you pray to God. It matters what you did, how you behaved: Where you a good person?
Mrs. Sendler is a good person. She saw that something was terribly wrong and she did something about it. Most of us aren't as brave as her, or even if we are, we aren't in a position to help as directly as she did. But we can yell about it. We can tell people that are in more of a position to help that it's not okay, that they must do something. 'Cause you know, we can't even pretend we're good people if we let this go on.
I'm here to tell you that you are not a good person if you don't care about this crisis. I don't normally lay things out so absolutely and I'm not one to be prejudice...but I don't think I'm being prejudice in this case. If you don't care about what's happening to the millions of innocent people in Darfur, then you are, by defininition a bad person. And you can be a Christian and be a bad person. Lots of them are bad people.
And no. I'm not a bitter Atheist -- not that Atheists are even bitter. I know heaps of them and most of them are very lovely people. I'm just sick to death of people pretending they're good people when they don't give a damn about people suffering -- people who are in a quite literal hell.
So whether it's arrogance, ignorance, or just plain being an asshole. Get. Over. It. Because these people need your attention, help, and compassion.
End rant.
2 Comments:
I agree with you. It doesn't matter who you are or where you came from; it only matters if you're a good person. Thank you for informing me about Mrs. Sendler being honored by the Polish senate, btw--I didn't even hear about that, and I think it's very happy. =)
By
Anonymous, at Thursday, March 15, 2007 7:24:00 PM
lol You didn't hear about it, because our news rarely informs us what's going on in the world at large -- just specific areas, which is sad, because it's a whole wide world out there. And we're all a part of it and stuff and yeah. *has had too much sugar*
By
Unknown, at Thursday, March 15, 2007 8:08:00 PM
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