The Price of Nothing

Nothing doesn't cost much. You wouldn't think it did, anyway.

But it does.

I know this because I've paid the price for Nothing on more than one occasion, and among those Nothing moments are numbered some of the most costly sorrows I have ever bought.

What sorrows do I speak of? Evils that could have been halted. Could have been stopped.

If someone had said or done Something.

But they didn't. They chose to do Nothing.

And it was in the vacuum of their inaction that I suffered.

There are usually three people in such situations. There is the wrongdoer. There is the victim. And there is the person who chose to do and say Nothing.

Sometimes whole crowds of people do Nothing, of course. But at the end of the day God doesn't judge crowds. He judges souls one at a time.

Speaking for myself, I've noted the irony that the memory of the pains inflicted by the perpetrator fade faster than the stubborn knowledge that "good people" stood by and did nothing to help me in my hour of need.

Was I not worth the bother? Not worth the risk? Not even worth a few words?

Someone reading this might think I've been through some dark hellish experiences. Not by ordinary reckoning. No physical torture here. Mostly just wounds from words that were never spoken in my defence.

But what must it feel like to be victim of a rape committed in a crowded street? It happens.

To rot in a prison, knowing that if enough people complained you'd get released. It happens.

To starve in a distant country, fully aware that wealthy people elsewhere who know of my plight are throwing piles of food away every day? It happens.

Yet perhaps we sell our human dignity short when we grant physical evils, awful as they are, special status. Laws in America usually do a pretty good job of protecting our corporeal bodies, so no... most of us, myself included, are in good shape on that front.

Protecting the soul is a bit trickier. A lot trickier. There aren't many laws that do that. God's law does. But judging by how often I've seen "good Christian folk" stand by while I suffered various comparably small injustices, I'd have to say God's law loses out to Nothing quite often.

Nothing is not cheap, but if people will choose Nothing to spare themselves a minor inconvenience, God only knows what they'll do when bigger risks are on the line. In Nazi Germany we witnessed not the mystery of so many who did Nothing, but the sheer miracle that even a few did Something.

God, grant me grace to know my role. I cannot do Everything. But I can do Something. And yet mostly I too do Nothing. Being hard on myself? False humility? No. Compared to what I could do... I've done a lot of Nothing. I'm a comfortable American. Need I say anything further? I know what the world is like. I've done more than Nothing. But not a lot more.

I hear others say we're not responsible to fix the world. I beg to differ. I think the wording itself is off. We have the option to make a difference. If we choose to do little or (God forbid) Nothing, then thus our choice shall be. We'll have to defend that choice before God one day, however. I'd rather have jumped for more options to do Something, driven by the love of Christ.

I was drawn to these dark reflections while viewing a Jars of Clay video entitled, Oh, my God. It ends with this chilling quote...

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
— Edmund Burke

These haunting words remind me of something Abraham Joshua Heschel once said. "Some are guilty. All are responsible." Heschel would know a thing or two about that, having lost a number of his relatives to Nazi gas chambers.

Dietrich Bonhoffer understood the price of Nothing. He was so grieved by it that he returned to Germany to die rather than leave others to pay it in his absense.

For every Dietrich Bonhoeffer, however, there were whole cities filled with "good Christian folk" who did nothing. Some of those cities were hardly a stone's throw away from a death camp. It took effort to not investigage the source of the stench, but most people were up to that task, as it worked out.

Would I have looked into matters more closely? Stood up for Jews being carted off? Been willing to die for them? Been a Dietrich?

Have mercy on us, oh my God.

Not all monsters are bad, but the ones who are good
Never do what they could, never do what they could.
— Jars of Clay