Do good

Martin Niemöller, a prominent Protestant pastor who opposed the Nazi regime. He spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. Germany, 1937. He is credited with the following excerpt .
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The above gentleman said all that I would have loved to say. It takes us to do nothing to be the same like those that do bad.

Saying nothing and doing nothing puts us on the same measure like those that do evil. My primary school teacher used to coerce us to expressing ourselves by always saying silence means consent and I find myself grateful to her for inculcating a spirit of speaking out in us.

Saying nothing and doing nothing is like walking into a filthy ablution, not doing anything to call order to it, but instead adding to the filth and then when walking out we then expect the next person who walks in not to associate you with the filthy mess and associated pungency.

When we fail to defend the weak and victimised we are actually failing ourselves and our children for when the questions arise, we shall be counted amongst those that did nothing.

Doing good salves the conscience and thus not doing good riddles the same.

Many look unto us to speak for them, to fight for them and to come to their rescue. When we cast our eyes to the other side we don’t only fail ourselves but disappoint those who hopefully looked up to us and Heaven does take note.

Before we whisper of national and political failures we need to see how much of those failures are as a result of us believing in not doing any good or raising our voices in truth about it. When a scourge ravages a society, whispering about it and not sanitising the community will not make the pestilence go away neither will closing your gate and hoping the fumes will not seep under your door help you because your children will scamper across the yard in innocence and what you could have prevented by doing good will riddle your household.

I advocate a people that see and speak for the good.

A people that say wrongs must be righted and not avenged.

A people that say wounds must not get to putrefcation before we act.

I believe that what we need is to be rescuers of our consciences than undertakers of our nation.

Finally, one man summed it up in an apt statement;

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)

I rest my case.