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Justice
Envision a lone boy lying down on a dirty bed. His eyes are
nearly popping out from their sockets. His mouth is infested with a
dozen alien insects hoping to steal away the meager nourishment he
receives. The young one’s whole frame is paper-thin skin with
the bones visibly projecting outwards. Infected with various
diseases, he slowly awaits the peace of death. These illnesses, now
curable by science, ravage the child’s puny physique. He has
nothing to hope for. In fact, the boy has never dreamed or hoped
throughout the short expanse of his life. Capture this picture and
multiply it a million times over. What you get is the kaleidoscope
of poverty that haunts every populated continent on earth. It is
the mural of half our society.
Yet, there is a faint glimmer of hope. It is deliverance of
justice into the hands of the poor. However, it does not refer to
the upholding of the law. This context of justice can never happen
for we are the culprits ourselves. We are wholly responsible for
the catastrophe that has  beset our world’s poor. As compensation for our
grievous crime, we should afford them the true justice that the
poor desire and need.
This justice is a process and like all processes it takes time
and energy. However, this is a task we all must undertake with
wholeheartedness and joy. The process begins with realizing that
there are millions of people suffering throughout the world. It is
also essential that we recognize why they are in anguish and what
caused such distress among a large number of peoples. Yes, media
may feature pictures of poverty almost everyday but media limits us
to view the better-looking ones. What is not being shown denies us
the knowledge of the true gravity of the situation being faced by
almost all poor people most specially in Third World countries. We
must go beyond the parameters of media and discover for ourselves
what is truly happening out in the world.
The second step is to treat the poor with true equality. As
people who have more in life, we have always pitied those below us,
the poor most specially. Yet this should not be so. Pitying them is
like treating the poor like mere animals. This is because we are
maintaining a certain aloofness; a superiority over the destitute.
An act done out of pity does not involve love, there is an essence
of detachedness. Instead of feeling sorry for the poor, we must be
compassionate with them. We should learn how to feel with and for
them.
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