What Do You Sacrifice?
I read a story in my Tagalog class that made my skin crawl:
Once upon a time, there was a family that lived in the forest. They were Father, Mother, four brothers and the youngest sister, who was very pretty and whom they all loved very much. They ate the fruits of the forest and were happy and never in want.
Once day, however, a drought came to the forest. The plants started to die and there wasn’t enough food for them to eat. They started to go hungry. One day, while they were foraging, the little girl said, “Last night I had a dream. The dream told me what we have to do. You have to kill me and separate my flesh from my bones and bury them. That will make the drought end and you will not be hungry again.”
“I don’t care if we go hungry,” said the father, “as long as we are together.”
“It’s alright,” said the little girl. “After you bury me, when you miss me, just look around and you will see me in everything. And every time you eat you will remember me.”
And so they did what she wished. They separated her bones from her flesh and buried them. And where they buried them, many different types of plants started to grow, and the family never went hungry again.”
This story stayed with me long after I had left the class. Not just for its eerie violent quality, but also for its troubling moral dimensions. “Imagine you are telling this story to children”, my teacher had said (as if I ever would!). “What would be the moral of the story?” I could guess at what she was thinking about – the value of sacrificing ourselves for others – but at the same time the whole premise repulsed me.
After a while I realised that what the story was presenting to me was a question: What or whom do I sacrifice for my own well-being? The family in the story, while initially hesitant, was willing in the end to sacrifice their daughter for their own survival. Whom do we sacrifice?
Every day when I walk out of the house here I pass barefooted children asking for alms, homeless families sleeping on the street, and smell the distinct smell of waste that accompanies the sight of slum dwellings packed tightly together with dank, dark alleyways running through them. And on the other side of the road are gated houses topped with barbed wire or electric fences, whose residents live in comfort and sometimes luxury – me included!
What kind of social structures do we live in that produce such degrading poverty, such terrible inequality? And what is my personal responsibility in this?
When I was living in my native Singapore, a relatively affluent society, poverty and inequality were things I was abstractly concerned about, but they didn’t tug as urgently at me as they do now, when I have seen small children rooting in trash cans for something to eat.
I think it is easy for us sometimes to settle for a private, me-and-God kind of spirituality that doesn’t stretch us to examine the social structures we are all responsible for, and ask the unsettling question: “Who am I sacrificing for my comfort and well-being?” Or to examine our own patterns of consumption and question if they are sustainable and don’t cause harm to someone somewhere who makes our shoes for pennies in airless factories, or whose surroundings are degraded because of the tons of toxic waste our lifestyles generate.
It is easy to throw up our hands and say, “It’s the system, what can I do?” But a holistic spirituality doesn’t absolve us so easily. It calls to us, gently but insistently, and reminds us of our role as citizens of an interdependent earth community: to be aware of and confront unjust social structures that destroy human society and our shared planet; and to work – in whatever way we can – for justice and peace in our broken world, with and for those who are poor and marginalised – the very ones for whom God feels the most compassion.
Food for thought:
What is my experience of unjust social structures?
What am I being called to do about them?
Once upon a time, there was a family that lived in the forest. They were Father, Mother, four brothers and the youngest sister, who was very pretty and whom they all loved very much. They ate the fruits of the forest and were happy and never in want.
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| Photo by Paul Jarvis on Unsplash |
“I don’t care if we go hungry,” said the father, “as long as we are together.”
“It’s alright,” said the little girl. “After you bury me, when you miss me, just look around and you will see me in everything. And every time you eat you will remember me.”
And so they did what she wished. They separated her bones from her flesh and buried them. And where they buried them, many different types of plants started to grow, and the family never went hungry again.”
This story stayed with me long after I had left the class. Not just for its eerie violent quality, but also for its troubling moral dimensions. “Imagine you are telling this story to children”, my teacher had said (as if I ever would!). “What would be the moral of the story?” I could guess at what she was thinking about – the value of sacrificing ourselves for others – but at the same time the whole premise repulsed me.
After a while I realised that what the story was presenting to me was a question: What or whom do I sacrifice for my own well-being? The family in the story, while initially hesitant, was willing in the end to sacrifice their daughter for their own survival. Whom do we sacrifice?
Every day when I walk out of the house here I pass barefooted children asking for alms, homeless families sleeping on the street, and smell the distinct smell of waste that accompanies the sight of slum dwellings packed tightly together with dank, dark alleyways running through them. And on the other side of the road are gated houses topped with barbed wire or electric fences, whose residents live in comfort and sometimes luxury – me included!
What kind of social structures do we live in that produce such degrading poverty, such terrible inequality? And what is my personal responsibility in this?
When I was living in my native Singapore, a relatively affluent society, poverty and inequality were things I was abstractly concerned about, but they didn’t tug as urgently at me as they do now, when I have seen small children rooting in trash cans for something to eat.
I think it is easy for us sometimes to settle for a private, me-and-God kind of spirituality that doesn’t stretch us to examine the social structures we are all responsible for, and ask the unsettling question: “Who am I sacrificing for my comfort and well-being?” Or to examine our own patterns of consumption and question if they are sustainable and don’t cause harm to someone somewhere who makes our shoes for pennies in airless factories, or whose surroundings are degraded because of the tons of toxic waste our lifestyles generate.
It is easy to throw up our hands and say, “It’s the system, what can I do?” But a holistic spirituality doesn’t absolve us so easily. It calls to us, gently but insistently, and reminds us of our role as citizens of an interdependent earth community: to be aware of and confront unjust social structures that destroy human society and our shared planet; and to work – in whatever way we can – for justice and peace in our broken world, with and for those who are poor and marginalised – the very ones for whom God feels the most compassion.
Food for thought:
What is my experience of unjust social structures?
What am I being called to do about them?
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