Closing our eyes and ears to human suffering in the world

The 'Thinking Anew' column in today's Irish Times.

Michael Commane

In mid-September I visited Halba in northern Lebanon, approximately 40km from the Syrian border.

People there have been living in soaring temperatures under tarpaulins. All facilities at a bare minimum and an entire generation of children is missing out on education.

Concern Worldwide, for which I work as a press officer, is supplying water and sanitation to those living in United Nations High Commission for Refugees tents. It is also supporting education for children.

We see the results of the Syrian war on our televisions and read it in our newspapers but when you see the suffering people with your own eyes  it's a very different story.

Every person with whom I spoke could recall the moment they left Syria. It was the day their home was bombed. They had one wish and that was for the war to end so that they could return home. 

Their suffering is pitiful.

There are approximately 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, another five million displaced people living in Syria and then there are the hundreds of thousands we see straggling across the roads and railways of Europe.

In a world of seven billion people, one billion have not enough to eat and an estimated 100 million people are homeless. Alongside this suffering there are individuals and corporations with billions. If we saved a quarter of the food we waste there would be enough to feed the one billion who are starving.

In tomorrow's Gospel we read: "Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, ....'You know the commandments: ... ' And he said to him, 'Master I have kept all these since my earliest days,'   Jesus looked steadily at him and he was filled with love for him, and he said, "You need to do one thing more. Go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." (Mark 10: 17 - 22)

How can any of us say we truly believe the words of Jesus and at the same time permit  the current status quo to continue?

When I spoke about the plight of the Syrian refugees a woman asked me what was being done for the 1,000 homeless people in Dublin. Someone else expressed the view that as long as Irish people are struggling we cannot afford to accommodate refugees.

But tomorrow's Gospel criticises a world order that allows some to have too much and others to do without. Surely if we read this Gospel and close our eyes to the unjust mess the world is in,  then our words are really nothing more than “pious piffle”.

There are those who speak disparagingly about an a la carte faith. But do we not all see the things we want to see and close our eyes and ears to those things we don't want to see and hear? 

If we were to live out tomorrow's Gospel then we would want to tear down the walls of the status quo that continues to turn a blind eye on the sufferings of millions of people, a suffering partly caused by an unfair distribution of wealth and resources. Because those who experience such hardship are not always in our neck of the woods doesn't mean that Gospel values do not apply to our treatment of them.

We pride ourselves on advanced technology that allows us send messages across the world in milliseconds. And yet we can sleep comfortably in our beds knowing that millions of people have not enough food to eat, a place to sleep. Our words pass in the ether over their heads.

The Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and those trying to make their way to safe havens in  Europe,  are just one aspect of the terrible suffering in the world.