Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Mar/70

Contributor - G. Balt

Title - Who Cares?

Topic - Youth

Night has fallen over the great city. But it brings no peace to the tenement district where hundreds of thousands of supposedly human beings live and love, and hate, in an area of only a few square miles. A tall, thin youth staggers across the filthy tenement hall, ignoring the evil stench of urine which assails his nostrils. Carrying a syringe, he disappears into the bathroom, which is shared by several families.

Half an hour later an ambulance wails its way through the weary streets and stops in front of the same tenement building. Puffing and perspiring, the white clad attendants climb the stairs to the fourth floor. Their remarks about the building, its smell and state of repair are, to say the least, most uncomplimentary. At the top of the stairs they find a familiar scene: the boy on the floor, the small red wound in the arm, someone holding the syringe. Quickly, they put the boy on the stretcher, but they are quite sure that this will be another D.O.A. case: dead on arrival. Tomorrow, if he dies, there will be another tiny headline in the newspaper: "Teenager Dies of Drug Overdose." To the ambulance attendants, the hospital, the police and the coroner's office he is just a statistic, but a mother weeps for her only son. What has she done wrong? He has always been such a good boy. The ghetto has taken its toll once again. But life goes on as usual in the city. Who cares?

It is also dark in Africa at this time, but it is particularly dark in that part known as Biafra. The skies are black, but not nearly so black as the despair that is reflected in hundreds of thousands of distended stomachs, gaunt cheeks and hollow eyes. Here a nation of intelligent, well educated Christian people is slowly starving to death. Meanwhile, in the west, government leaders are concerned with over-production of wheat and how the price of this precious food can be maintained in the face of competition from other nations. And in hundreds of luxurious restaurants thousands are spending ten to twenty dollars on dinner for two and then in many cases not eating all the food served. Who cares?

In a lonely room in a small town a girl cries. Far from the comforts of home and the sustenance of her loved ones she faces the trauma of childbirth under an assumed name. At sixteen, it is the first time that she has been away from home overnight alone. She did not want to go, but she could not stay, because she comes from a "nice" family and such things just do not happen to girls like her. Even her close friends have shunned her; she feels totally rejected. She is not even sure that her parents love her anymore: she has not heard from them for a week. She feels that everyone condemns her, that even God has turned his face away from her, that she is totally alone in the universe with this new life stirring within her. What a wonderful miracle if only there were someone here to share this glorious experience with her. But society has condemned her to this lonely room, that society which promotes and encourages promiscuity by the skillful use of sex in advertising, which creates a false aura of glamour around immature, irresponsible sexuality. That same society closes its eyes to excesses in "fashion" which are designed to inflame the passions in unbalanced minds and then turns its back on the helpless victims. Who can know the anguish in a young girl's soul; the guilt, the fear, the loneliness and the bitterness, the sense of being cheated, of losing out on life's truly beautiful moments. Who will heal the scars on this young spirit; who will put back the sparkle in her eyes? Who cares?

You will find them doing their thing on Yorkville Avenue in Toronto, where hundreds of them gather on warm summer nights. The crowds spill off the sidewalks, which caused the police to set up a barrier at Bay Street on two successive evenings this summer: no cars allowed. This is the territory of the freaks as they call themselves; the girls with the bare midriffs, the long, stringy hair, with micro-skirts or elephant pants; boys with army shirts, carefully curled hair and handlebar mustaches. They walk up and down the streets, they sip their drinks in the sidewalk cafes; they gyrate to the music in the discotheques, they sit in a circle in the middle of the street and sing. Two boys claiming to be draft-dodgers ask likely looking passersby for money for food. They explain that their "pad" is so small that they have to sleep in shifts. Others sell underground newspapers to people passing on the sidewalk, gawking at the "hippies". But most "straight" people have never read The Harbinger or a similar newspaper to try to understand the viewpoint of the "heads" or "rapped" with any "freaks" to find out what is bugging them about our society. After all, they're just a bunch of lazy, filthy parasites. But some, not all, of these young people have seen the meaninglessness and the injustices of our way of life and the vast gulf fixed between our professed values and the ones by which we really live. Meanwhile, some of our upstanding citizens believe that the entire hippie movement can be rooted out by strong arm tactics. This would be treating the symptom rather than the cause. But then, who cares?

Lord, teach me to care. Teach me to care about the junkie who is hooked to a habit which brings excruciatingly slow death, about the starving Ibos in Biafra, about the alienated youth who are trying to create a lifestyle devoid of the abuses of Western Capitalism, but who are also rejecting the advantages and accomplishments of our system. Help me to care about our Canadian Indians, such as Indian children being strapped in Church-administered schools because they speak their own native tongue on the playground, about ghetto-bound poor who are caught in a vicious circle of sub-standard education and low wages. Teach me, Lord, to be actively concerned about the exploitation of sex in advertising and various forms of entertainment and the increasing divorce rate, about the terrible plight of the homosexual, about the stark, sterile life of the aged. There is so much that can be done, Lord, and so much that needs to be done, but I don't know where to start. Or is it that I don't want to start, that I really do not care?

Show me what I can do, Lord. Help me to care.

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