Who is pushing them in?

Last Sunday l listened to a sermon by Bishop Scanlon with the above title.

Did you know that around 49 people are murdered everyday in South Africa! The list of crimes is endless, rape, car hijackings, taxi violence, cash in transit heists, cash point robberies, farm attacks, kidnappings etc.

After observing this and assisting in creating rescue attempts which appeared futile, Desmond Tutu had this to say:-  You can only rescue so many  drowning people from the river before you have to go upstream to see who is pushing them in!

South Africa suffered Apartheid which was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990’s.

At the end of the apartheid white South Africans who made up 10% of the South African population owned roughly 90% of South African Land as a result of a series of Land Acts. More than 3.5million black South Africans were forced to live on arbitrary reservations called Bantu stands depriving them of political power and pushing them into poverty.

To this day South Africa has one of the highest gini coefficients (a measure of inequality) in the world. Research shows that inequality and crime go hand in hand and this is the problem that needs to be resolved in South Africa.

As l listened to all of this from Bishop Paul Scanlon l wondered what this has to do with me or you?

Turns out that we too have ideologies, mentalities and beliefs that maybe be drowning us. Instead of adopting the rescue mentality we need to stop and address the source of our problems.

Are we relying a little too much on these so called man of Gold who solely rely on supernatural encounters / miracles with God whilst completely ignoring education and empowerment which leads to personal development?

Perhaps we are taking too much medication because we have ended up with obese related illnesses or we are stuck in a dead-end job because going to college to obtain new skills is too much of a bother?

Although it’s easier and much more gratifying to continue rescuing sooner or later we have to confront the source of the problems in our lives even if we do this reluctantly.  It will be the beginning of the desperately needed breakthrough to progress.