Why is there so little care?

Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash

On the heels of a royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse there is a royal commission mooted for the widespread problems in the aged care sector. Just as not every institution let children down, not every aged care facility is derelict in their discharge of their duty of care.

But the issues are broad enough. There are tens of thousands of people genuinely grieving for the plight of their elderly relative, just as there are tens of thousands of people who have in some way suffered abuse, either as a child or adult or both. For many, they endure within hellish environs.

It’s hard to determine whether the abuse is worse than ever or whether it’s just better reported these days; possibly both amongst other factors. And these issues, although they are incredibly grave, are the tip of the iceberg. There are refugees, the lost and stolen generations, the methamphetamine epidemic, the crisis surrounding mental health and suicide, and a silent grief suffered in myriad ways winning the scope of millions of voiceless lives.

This article is not intended to depress you,
I just ask a simple question:
why is there so little care?

Why is it that those we have come to rely upon have so sorely let us down? How is it that we have slipped so far in terms of care and protection for the vulnerable? If the problems are genuinely systemic, why are so many complicit to silence?

Well, it is debatable whether we have ever cared for the vulnerable as we should have? Now, thanks to investigative journalism and social media, we know we don’t. At least we know. We should wonder how bad any of these issues were 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. Oh, that’s right, the issues were just as bad back then, and in many ways, we are only finding out now! All those decades of the abused suffering in silence. And it’s only those who are in the immediacy of suffering who truly have some grasp of the state we’re in.

We arrived at the point where we wonder where the world is going if it has always been this way, either blissfully unaware of horrors taking place in plain sight or painfully aware of the secret horrors exposed.

Any caring person who has a stake in life is gravely concerned with the status quo, but that grave concern grows tangentially when that caring person, or those they care about, is embroiled as a victim themselves.

First-hand experience of the horrors of abuse
take people on a disparate path toward
an entirely alienating destiny.

First-hand experience is, of itself, unbelievable within the perception, yet entirely believable by fact. Little wonder there is so much post-traumatic stress and the associated disorder.

We learn to care very much when we are wrapped up in some kind of travesty. We may have always cared, but along with the tangential journey that ramps up in crisis, our care ramps up in the concern of a simmering outrage and an indignation beyond words.

So, what can we do? What are we to do when we are faced with such dilemmas of conscience and reality. Somehow, we need to protect what we care about, and even the level of our care. We are easily jaded, and in social media world we too easily inflict our outrage on those we have next to no relationship with.

If we believe in Jesus, we believe that he will return soon and completely transform the earth and bring all injustice to Judgment.

In the meantime, we are charged with caring for everything within our sphere of influence within the bounded limitations we all are personally encumbered by.

Part of it is caring enough
not to be complacent,
whilst not caring so much to be
burned-out with compassion fatigue.

The world needs compassion and kindness and gracious love and gentleness, all these and more.

Our world and our lives will be judged on how we treated the vulnerable. This is something to be seriously reflected upon. It starts from each one of us. We are not powerless, indeed, we within our own lives are very powerful. Are we patient? Are we kind? Are we compassionate within our fallen world?

The object of life in today’s world is to care enough to make the difference we can, whilst not caring so much that the abuses we see and experience destroy us.