The Suffering of Children
Somewhere in Darfur, in a makeshift tent, among the millions of starving and the diseased sits a boy just barely 9 years old. Three years ago, when he was just 6, he was made to watch the massacre of his pregnant mother, the rape of his 11 year old sister and the butchering of his father by Arab Janjaweed militia men.
Now, even as he sits in the relative safety of the encampment, he can see visions and hear the screams around him until it transforms into a piercing ring in his ears. That's when he would collapse in an uncontrollable fit. Hungry and utterly destitute, he now waits. For what, he does not know. He is only 1 of the millions of confused, displaced, homeless and scared children of the world
Two thousand miles to the east, in a dimly lit apartment in Maafannu, a girl cowers in a corner clutching a pillow for protection. Tonight, he will come, he will offer some useless gift as usual, then he will talk and then it will begin. The pain will begin. She knows what to do. She would close her eyes, transport herself faraway, forget about the violation committed on her fragile body while fighting the tears that never cease. For 3 years since she was 6 this man, her uncle, a trusted and respected family man has sexually abused her. The pain and mental anguish is unbearable now.
Now, secretly, in the darkness that has shrouded her mind, she dreams of death.
To the north, thousands of years ago, a man led his son to a sacrificial altar. His son, confused by the actions of his father, submitted quietly as children often do. Several moments later he was bound-up and laid face down. Terrified and in tears the child looked up at his father who was poised with a knife ready to slit his throat. He closed his eyes as a muffled cry escaped his mouth in anticipation of pain. Then nothing happened. He opened his eyes to see his father, Abraham, had stopped and let go of the knife.
Children face inhumane cruelty, mental trauma and death everyday throughout the world. It is estimated that some 20 thousand children die every day from starvation and preventable diseases. Children, by their very nature, do not understand the reason for their suffering. They do not even have a need to understand. We may justify our suffering by saying that out of our suffering we learn to become better people or become wiser and more knowledgeable. But what use is becoming better and wiser for children?
A serial killer may abduct then rape and kill a child. Christians say such horrors are all part of god’s cosmic plan and that ultimately, somewhere down the line, it will all make sense. Muslims believe that humans were given freewill, the abuse of which will be punished on judgment day. This is all very well. Christians will shrug off such atrocities as god’s plan and Muslims will pray for the fires of hell to burn the killer. But what about the child? Where was her freewill in the intricacies of all these beliefs? And what about the grieving parents of the child? What about the killer who goes on to kill even more, sometimes dozens of children? If this is his test where do all his little victims fit into the scheme of such personalised trials?
Sinning is supposedly the cause of suffering. The Asian tsunami was believed by millions of Christians and Muslims to be god’s punishment for sinful ways. It was such a deadly delivery that it killed thousands of children in an instant along with the few grown-ups deserving of punishment. Why god required the slaughter of thousands of helpless children (the estimate is around 50,000 little expendable children) and spared the material buildings of some mosques, churches and houses to get a point across should be a big question believers of such nonsense should ask themselves.
Throughout history mankind has used the suffering of children to demonstrate their own convictions, commitment to a god (or gods) or to justify their belonging to a group. Ancient tribes sacrificed children to appease angry gods. Tribes murder the children of rival tribes to bring them to their knees. Abraham almost sacrificed his own son to god in a display of absolute submission and in the process traumatizing poor Ishmael (or Isaac).
And it is this suffering of children that can never be justified. No great thinker, no great intellectual, no raving prophet and no religion can justify the suffering and murder of children without making god sound as heartless as the serial killer, as ruthless as the militant leader and as indifferent as the force of the tsunami.
How exactly does one tell the starving child in Darfur that his life is a test? How do we negotiate the great cosmic plan with the suffering of the abused child in Maafannu? Was the sole purpose of life of the victim of the serial killer just that; to be a victim, to be expendable? No great offering of heavenly prizes or the riches of the hereafter can be a worthy price of reconciliation for the life of the innocent and helpless child.
“If the sufferings of children go to make up the sum of sufferings which is necessary for the purchase of truth, then I say beforehand that the entire truth is not worth such a price.” – Ivan to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.