Bearing Witness to Suffering

I recently completed a college course on the theology of suffering, where we studied the writings of holocaust survivor and human rights activist Elie Wiesel. As always when I read or hear about the tragedy of the holocaust, I was deeply moved. I was moved with shame that the United States turned an indifferent eye to the human suffering that resulted in the extermination of six million Jews--until the war affected us, that is. I was also moved with compassion for the deep suffering the survivors lived with. What an incredibly weighty burden to bear the collective memory of six million brothers and sisters who were put to death senselessly! Finally, I was moved by my own indifference, in the past, to the suffering of others around me. As part of my own journey of healing the harms I caused by committing a crime, it is essential for me to understand the suffering I caused. While I never wanted to cause suffering, I am appalled by my indifference to the likely consequences of my actions. But it is not enough for me to simply understand the consequences of my behavior. I don't want to stand by when people are humiliated, abused, or harmed in any way. I want to be a voice of opposition to these dehumanizing behaviors and a voice of healing to those who have, tragically, already been harmed. Wiesel said that those who suffer through an experience are duty bound to bear witness to it. I can't bear witness to the suffering of crime victims, but I can empathize with it and seek to heal the suffering I and others have caused. I can speak up with compassion for their suffering and vigilantly try to prevent more victims. I can't bear witness to the suffering of communities who are harmed by crime, but I can attempt to repair the harms I've caused my own community and become an advocate for community healing. What I can bear witness to is the dehumanizing effects experienced by those who harm others. Those who have awoken to the humanity of others suffer deeply from the harms they caused. It is a heavy burden that serves both to motivate a profound sense of compassion and to require an active response to repair those harms. Harming others is dehumanizing because it strips something essential from one's soul. God made us to be in relationship with others, and when we harm someone we strip ourselves of the freedom to form these relationships. Being sentenced to prison removes us from healthy communities where these relationships can be nurtured, and, instead, places us in toxic communities where humanity is not valued--by prisoners and prison guards alike. Some people may think it is justice for prisoners to be treated inhumanely, since they too dehumanized their own victims. But we can't teach others to behave with respect and compassion for humanity by dehumanizing them. Unfortunately, I am powerless to stop prison or jail guards from mocking mentally ill prisoners, from humiliating men by making them get naked and repeatedly "bend and spread" in front of other men--just for kicks, or from abusing power just to prove a point. None of these degrading behaviors come even close to the horrors the Jewish people experienced under Hitler, but as Wiesel noted, I am duty bound to bear witness to my own experiences. This blog is just the start of that witnessing. It is a way for me to reclaim my own humanity and to speak up for those who suffer, both inside and outside prison.