All in all, we focus too much on ourselves. Whether because of fear, or complacency, or indifference, we fail to look up and notice the suffering of others. And when we do, we find ourselves unready to question things, and to speak out.
Whenever this happens on a large scale—and it is happening now—we are in trouble. In the well known words of Martin Niemoeller, a pastor in Nazi Germany:
First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up.
May God give it that we heed Niemoeller’s warning, and speak up before we lose that right. May God give it that, rather than contributing to a failed “war on terror,” people everywhere stand up to be counted in a far more vital battle: a war against fear. After all, we have the weapons at our disposal already: love, justice, forgiveness, prayer, and hope—and the knowledge that God has a real purpose for every life.
Taken From Searching for the Mountain Top: Finding a Purpose in a Time of Fear, by Johann Christoph Arnold.
