The sin of the blind eye

Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering towards slaughter. If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done? Proverbs 24:11-12

How do you react to coincidences? Do you try to attach deep significance to them, or do you just notice them, shrug your shoulders, and carry on?

Personally, I belong in the second category. I’m certainly open to the possibility that a coincidence might contain some kind of message for me, but – well - it’s never happened yet, so I don’t get too excited.

But a coincidence that came my way just this morning was, let’s say, very striking if nothing else.

My regular Bible reading included the verses at the top, where the writer tells his readers, in effect, not to turn a blind eye to wickedness. Don’t say “But we knew nothing about this” – this massacre of innocent people. God knows your heart.

That struck me very forcibly, and I knew straight away that I wanted to write a post about it.

And then, as if by way of confirmation, about an hour later I was reading the morning paper and I came across this quote: “What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander”.

Those powerful words were written by Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust who devoted the bulk of his life (he died in 2016, aged 87) to fighting for the human rights of not only his fellow-Jews but all sorts of other victims.

The two quotes are an almost perfect match for one another – too coincidental to be accidental?

The coincidence didn’t end there. I immediately thought how a few weeks ago my wife and I had watched a television box-set called Band of Brothers. It’s about a platoon of American soldiers fighting in Europe in the Second World War. By the sixth or seventh episode I was beginning to find it a little same-ish, and happy to think we were getting towards the end.

But then came the part when the soldiers stumbled across a concentration camp – and I can only say that the horrors of the next few minutes made the whole series worthwhile. My wife and I have been to Auschwitz, and of course we have seen those grainy black and white photos. But the way that film portrayed the unspeakable vileness of what went on in places like that was simply overpowering. You could only shake your head in disbelief.

But there was still something else, and this was the clincher. The concentration camp was very close to a village – a village of solid, ordinary citizens going about their everyday business. But the claim of these people was exactly what Proverbs 24:12 says: “But we knew nothing about this”. What, not even from the stench of disease and death blowing in with every breeze?

How easy it is to condemn those people! They are caught up in a war, and it’s a war they are losing. They are in a situation which is beyond anything they could ever imagine. Their lives are in peril. Life is a waking nightmare.

And how can any of us avoid the question: What would I have done? Kept my head down and just hoped for it all to end? Convinced myself that, well, there’s really nothing I could do anyway?

Both the Book of Proverbs and Elie Wiesel were writing about extreme situations. But of course the “turn-a-blind-eye” reflex can kick in in what seem the most humdrum of circumstances – somebody being bullied at work, perhaps, or a child showing signs of neglect, or an injustice that seems to escape the system and which nobody seems to care about, or a charity doing good work but struggling to survive financially.

All of us will one day stand before God in judgment, including those of us whose sins have been dealt with by the cross of Jesus. Shouldn’t that thought alone be enough to make us look fairly and squarely in the face the responsibility which God lays upon us?

True, we mustn’t develop a guilt complex over this. There are so many good things being left undone and injustices being left unchallenged, and there’s a limit to what we can do. But the rock solid rule must surely be: If I can, then I must. Whatever the cost. Whatever the sacrifice.

Cain tried to wriggle out of responsibility for Abel’s death. “Leave me alone,” he says to God. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). God gives no direct answer to that question. But we know what the answer is, don’t we? Yes, deep down we know: a thousand times, Yes.

Lord God, give me the eyes to see and the love of Jesus to respond to evil wherever it rears its head. Amen.