ALL LIVES MATTER:Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere

In a world where we are consuming news unfiltered and in real time. In the recent past we have been inundated with reports of violence from Baton Rouge to St Paul. From Turkey to Sudan and many other places that the mainstream media doesn’t invest as much time and resources.

Martin Luther King Jr, a champion of peace paraphrased that,”injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.” But in today’s world 100 deaths in Congo might not matter as much as 1 death in Manhattan NY. As a people we have been and continue to be conditioned by the mainstream media to value life in terms of dollars. Even more troubling is that the church is using the same template to value lives. Case in point is when a church picks and chooses on who to help based on “ return on investment”. If we believe in the sanctity of life as a generation, then loss of any life should affect all of us whether the people look like us, whether they worship the same God like we do or not.

Even amidst all the chaos and all the media keeps us preoccupied with. It’s important to find the eye of the storm in our lives and reflect on what really matters;family,retirement and life in eternity.

Family is the unit of a society and whichever way the family goes, so does the society. What we are experiencing today is the result of what has been going on in our homes. The ubiquity of cameras has helped expose our dirty linens. The ones we would have rather kept secret. We can present a plethora of arguments of how to solve this mess based on your profession, faith, race or ideology. But one thing that we can all agree on is the silver bullet to these chaos is love. The simple premise that I want the best for you and you want the best for me. There are obvious historical ills from family level to international level that continue to strain our relationships as the human race. We have in the past undercut our neighbors so we can have more for us and all who come behind us at the expense of our neighbor’s daily bread. This has created distrust and tension between families,tribes,races,countries and blocks. It’s important to know and acknowledge our history but also be grateful that Inspite  of the history, we have overcome and we own the present. Future generations will be in our place soon and they will judge us the same way we are judging the one before us. We can hit the reset button and choose to love all like they were all our own. Acknowledging that there are more than enough resources for all of us if we can all get along. Also whichever group of people that thinks that they can control resources, that’s an aberration of reality. As we have learnt over generations there is much more that we don’t know about and we will never exhaust God’s creation.

We have experienced people who shared a history, heritage, predicament or an aspiration come together and worked together to achieve set goals or confront a challenge. We saw the president of Kenya rally the African Union as he sought justice from a system that the African nations largely believe is biased against them. We have seen it when European countries formed an economic block to empower their trade positioning. We have also seen brexit where Britain felt that the union was a raw deal and pulled out.  We have seen black lives matter movement where some people have experienced unfair treatment in the hands of police and rallied to seek justice.

Unity is golden not just when I am winning, but when the human race stands together for justice for all. This can only be achieved when all religions takes responsibility of the ills that we face in our generation. We often blame bad leadership for the evils, but those leaders and their followers are a product of our homes,churches and schools. One of the problem is the faithful have chosen to appease the dollar rather than stand for what is true.

If we are the salt of the world, the light of the world, we ought to take a stand. Let us be proactive with our values and not reactive to the socialite influence.

“In matters of style Amin with current; in matters of principle stand like  a rock.” Thomas Jefferson. God is sovereign and heaven is real. But as we continue to spread the promise of eternity. The church also has a responsibility to guide humanity, to influence culture before we meet our maker. Let us rise up as a generation and take a stand. A stand which is love for all humanity. Black lives matter, blue lives matter, all lives matter.

By Kibiru Mugechi