By Andy Im / March 2018
We’ve grown accustomed to knowing everything often moments after they occur. Through media outlets like Twitter and Facebook, we have in a sense become like gods, omniscient to global events.
And because we’re aware, we’ve also become involved—butting our noses, though friendly, into the issues of humanity whether they concern us or not. This is what technology has enabled us to do and to become.
Consequently, some feel responsible to take action for the atrocities that occur in, say Africa or Asia, and other parts of the world.
We sense this responsibility because we know, and this phenomenon of knowing is a constructed reality often determined by the algorithms and political viewpoints of various entities and their websites and programs. Mind you, if sin had not occurred, even Adam in his natural state wouldn’t have had the access to the potential we now have at any single moment.
How do we handle such superfluous amounts of information? Are we morally accountable for this knowledge? Should we be the good Samaritan every time we see a wounded “Jew” on CNN or FOX News? Is it our responsibility to take political and social action and get off our "donkey" to assist every person that’s fallen by the wayside? How can we with the endless tweets and posts revealing yet more individuals and groups suffering from abject misery, abuse, and genocide?
The media is a powerful medium. Information is fed to us supernaturally through a created, man-made medium. Facebook and Twitter didn’t have to exist. It just happens to, and there are consequences.
Every day we witness suffering and death and do nothing—absolutely nothing—about it. The corollary being that we reinforce the fact that we’ll yet again do nothing. We repeat this cycle again and again.
Repetition breeds habit and habit makes mundane something that should mean something. But it’s morphed into nothing. Atrocities don't phase us.
Maybe that’s one of the reasons we’ve grown increasingly numb to the plight of humanity. We’re accustomed to doing nothing. We've acclimated ourselves into a state of indifference.
I can assure you, if Adam knew what we knew, he’d be horrified. Imagine how sensitized he was to life and more so, death?
The pen of inspiration states that when Adam “witnessed the first signs of decay in the falling leaf and in the drooping flowers, he mourned more deeply than men now mourn over their dead” (Conflict & Courage, 19).
That's a pretty deep thought.