My days are mostly mundane but sometimes exciting. Yesterday I saw the light of understanding burn brightly for two of the students that a teach or tutor. Such moments give me hope for a world that is filled with problems caused by human inability to simply get along. I often struggle to understand how disagreements lead to wars and yet I am familiar enough with the history of the human experience to know that people are not always at their best. How things get so far out of hand that they lead to death and destruction is beyond my ability to even imagine, but I know that there truly is a dark side to the way humans interact that has the potential to create chaos and destruction. 

Somehow I ended up living in a little bubble in a safe corner of the world. I have endured tragedies and incredible losses but I was always surrounded by love to carry me through such events. Even in my darkest hours I understood that my pain and suffering would be momentary in the grand scheme of things. I have returned again and again to the comfort and security of knowing that I am surrounded by goodness and that the evil I witness is something seemingly far away from me. My good fortune has kept me optimistic and sometimes admittedly naive about horrors that have been as much a part of the human journey as the joys that comfort me again and again. 

I pride myself on being well informed and searching for truth, but when it comes to wars between nations or groups of people I become confused. I start from my own thinking which would never allow me to purposely harm another person no matter how angry I may be. This perspective has kept me centered and mostly happy but it is also shields me from reality. I see inhumanity and I cringe in disbelief, questioning whether my own refusal to believe that people are at heart sinners is part of the problem. How do I look away from the evidence that there is indeed an evil side to our natures? What can I possibly do other than brood when I witness human inhumanity? 

As I go about my daily chores I pride myself in keeping up with the news, being an informed citizen. I awake early and read three or four newspapers before getting to work. I listen to NPR as I drive to my teaching sessions or while running errands. I am aware of the many issues plaguing the world and yet I all too often fall into a habit of resigning myself to a certainty that there is little that I might do to resolve those problems. 

I try to discuss such things but find that most people prefer to keep conversations light and cheery. They quickly change the subject with inane assertions that life “is what it is.” They note that few of the topics that I mention are their problems. I begin to wonder if I am simply too obsessed with thinking about difficulties that don’t appear to directly involve me. Still I muse about that possibility that much of the violence in the world is caused by our indifference to injustice. I can’t send the remnants of my dinner to a starving child, but surely there are other sacrifices that I might make to help even one more person go to bed tonight will a feeling of fullness. 

Not long ago I watched and award winning documentary of Frontline on PBS. It was a film created in the opening days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine called 20 Days in Mariupol. It showed the destruction of that city by Russian forces with brutal honesty that left me sobbing uncontrollably and wondering why anyone is ever willing to attack and kill their fellow humans. The sheer brutality leading to the collapse of Mariupol from the relentless and indiscriminate bombing by Russian invaders left me considering our responsibilities to each other. How can we simply look at such evil and then go about our routines as though it is none of our business? 

I write my blogs and read my Bible at the beginning of each day. I go about my scheduled activities and run my errands sometimes being annoyed by petty slights. Then I suddenly remember the young boy who was playing soccer in Mariupol when bombs fell all around him. He lost both of his legs and then his life for no conceivable reason other than a tyrant’s desire to exert power over others. I remember the young pregnant woman who sought refuge in the maternity ward of a hospital as she neared the due date of her child. How can there be any redeeming reason for the loss of her life and that of her unborn child from bombs dropped on a civilian sanctuary? 

Mariupol ultimately fell to Russia but two years later the war for the soul of Ukraine continues. Since then terror and war has spread. The Hamas raid on Israel has led to the destruction of much of Gaza and a death toll that includes tens of thousands of innocent people who only want to live the way I do. As more and more people seek refuge from war, famine, natural disasters, authoritarian governments our response is mostly to divide ourselves into groups that quibble with one another over what to do or not do. 

The cynics would argue that this has been the way of the world for all time and it would be difficult to refute them. Nonetheless, surely we should be able to somehow minister to the suffering by aiding them in their struggles Today they are fighting for freedoms, for human dignity. Tomorrow it could be us. We should be using our powers of persuasion and our powers of the purse to at least try to make a difference. 

George W Bush’s greatest accomplishment as President of the United States was to diligently work to eliminate the AIDs epidemic in Africa. The knowledge, education, and medical funding that the United States sent to that continent made a huge difference in successfully working on what had seemed to be an impossible task. Those efforts forestalled what might have been yet another indescribable tragedy and yet as the time to renew that effort loomed we chose to tighten our purse strings and put the entire program in a state of uncertainty. Why are we so inclined to be stingy when something does not benefit us directly or if something takes longer to resolve than we had hoped?

I suppose that I will keep writing for the choir that returns to my blogs. I will continue teaching young people so that one day they will be able to take on the problems that are sure to arise. I will use my voice no matter how weak it may be. I want to believe that somehow the goodness of the world will ultimately overwhelm the bad. We can’t look away! We can’t just say that the world has always been this way. We should always do better.