Life-promoting at all cost

No human person or the social structure on earth under whatever pretext, has the moral authority to take the life of a human person. Sometimes I fear we have given too much liberty to the state and the state machinery to play with the lives of its citizens at will, with very little care and concern for their lives. The human made hunger and starvation in certain parts of the world, and the growing colossal waste of edible things in other parts of the planet make one to think if God had created two kinds of human beings. But that is only one side of the spectrum, where we witness people dying en masse due to mismanagement of the earth’s resources. If the state had wisely allocated the natural resources to her citizens, such a thing may not happen.

I tend to believe that the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis summarizes the entire history of the human race. If we look carefully at the way how different incidents and events in the first few chapters represent epoch-making events of the world’s history, we are awe-stuck. Let me take the story of Cain and Abel to illustrate how what transpired between the two brothers is symbolic of what is happening even today in our neighborhood. Cain and Abel are, to use a term popularized by Carl Jung, archetypes of certain sections of the society. From a simplistic point of view, they represent the good and the evil, but looking at from a deeper perspective they represent the life-promoting and life-denying forces.

In every place where life is denied, either voluntarily or involuntarily, then the spirit of Cain is at work, and wherever we encounter life is promoted and safeguarded at all cost, then the spirit of Abel is at work. Whatever be the situation and partiality that became apparent for Cain, he had no right to take the life of his brother Abel. He could never justify what he had done. No death can be final, but it might only unearth some other dirty demons out of the cupboards. In the Bible the event has been presented in a dramatic way, as if the spirit of Abel crying for justice in the presence of God. If such is true, then God should be spending sleepless nights each day, because we cannot imagine how many lives are taken forcefully each day.

One of the primary responsibilities of every state is to promote life of her citizens and provide avenues for them to nurture and cherish life. The state cannot put her citizen in an endangering situation, leave alone put them at the forefront of battlegrounds, where their lives would be at stake. Human race had fought many a battle, where millions of men, women and children had breathed their lost, in order to protect the selfish motives of a handful of political leaders, who desired to have their way, at the loss of these men and women. In the name of national security, every nation spends billions of dollars in order to keep the aliens away; protecting the lifeless borders is one thing, and killing the intruding the ‘foreigners’ is another issue.

Everyone on earth can be a life-promoter, in whatever little way it is possible. We do not need to do great things, but we could do simple things through which we could safeguard the life of a person or two. If every individual on earth vouches to protect the life of the people around, and go to all extend to promote life, then the world would be a different place altogether. Evil might be fleeing from the face of the earth too soon. It is possible for every person to do this simple act of charity : each day as I wake up I could whisper to myself that I would promote life of the persons I shall be encountering this day, and will not be the cause of the life-denial of anyone. There is nothing impossible in this simple resolution, and then we will see how the world is becoming the Garden of Eden once again, and this time there might be no snake to tempt and trick us.