The IDPs and Parable of Lazarus
As we enter this year hopeful, I am hopeful that the story I am about to relate will tug at our hearts concerning the plight of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) scattered around our country. Lazarus was a poor man who hung around the gate of a very wealthy man, hoping to pick up the man’s crumbs. The man, needless to say, lived life to the fullest, eating and drinking sumptuously. He had so much stored away that he had not a care in the world!
Did he see Lazarus at his gate as he passed daily? He did, of course. But that was not his burden. If Lazarus (the name literally means ‘God will help’) was poor and beggarly, that was not his fault. He owed no one – least of all this beggar, Lazarus – a living. ‘Come to think of it’, his eyes narrowed. ‘This poor beggar must be paying for his sins. Do all men not reap what they sow? For me, God has seen my righteousness and hard work and has accordingly rewarded me. And now I have so much to last me a life time. Hey man, enjoy yourself. Live the life!’
Well, it wasn’t long before their lives ran their full course. Both died, and it was reckoning time. The story says that the rich man ended up in hell because he had abused the trust that God gave him in placing riches in his hands for the benefit of people like Lazarus. Since Lazarus himself had nothing to give others, he could not be accused of refusal to meet their needs. God welcomed him into everlasting rest.
It’s not difficult to guess that you lined up behind Lazarus, the good guy in this story. That is where I belong too. But are we sure that we are not acting daily like the rich man? Check it out: If you can read this story, one can rightfully assume that you can afford not less than two meals a day, and that you do not go about in rags without a place to lay your head. This story is therefore about us. Around us today, especially in the camps of IDPs, are thousands of Lazaruses – old, young and children. They are starving, disease-ridden clotheless, and hopeless. Kwashiorkor has enlarged their tummies as if in competition with rich people like the man in our story. But we walk by, heads straight ahead and refusing to look at them lest our in-built sense of compassion be awakened! In saner moments, particularly those moments when the TV screens splash their pictures before us, we are moved to pity – even appalled.
Ours is the so-called ‘Me generation’ that puts oneself first in all things. This is nothing new, really. That was the rich man’s philosophy. It has always been mankind’s – an existentialist philosophy typified by the senseless stocking of wealth and possessions for ‘me, myself and I’. And so Lazarus doesn’t count. So we hear Jean Sartre quip, ‘Hell is other people.’ The Lazaruses of this world make life a hell if we bother about them. No, it makes no sense. Let them be. Heaven’s better. So everyone to their fate! But how much is the payback? Vanity.
What does God, our creator, demand of us? Simply to love Him and our neighbour – including Lazarus – as ourselves. The late Michael Sarward reminds us that God did not create the human race so that He could obtain sadistic pleasure from watching some wallow in obscene riches while others suffer and waste away in abject penury, hunger and disease. Rather, He intended men and women to find fulfilment in each other, living within their Maker’s handbook: ‘I was hungry, and you fed me; I was naked, and you clothed me; I was homeless, and you took me in. Come into the Kingdom of my Father.’ For those who turn away the Lazarus – ‘I was hungry and fed me not; I was naked and you clothed me not; I was homeless, and you did not take me in’ – the verdict is fearsome: ‘Depart from me you cursed into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’
Can we remember the Lazaruses in the IDP camps and around us today? That is the reason God placed resources in our hands.
J. M. Ade-Zaky, jmadezaky@justice.com