"I come from a people who gave the Ten Commandments to the world. Time has come to strengthen them by three additional ones, which we ought to adopt and commit ourselves to: thou shall not be a perpetrator; thou shall not be a victim; and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander."
Yehuda Bauer, professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The bystander shares in the guilt of the perpetrator and in the shame of the victim.
"Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9). “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord" (Jeremiah 9:23-24). "If one of you says to a needy brother, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?'" (James 2:15; cf., Matthew 25:35-36).
Illustration Exchange
"Olaudah Equiano, born in 1745 (in what is now Nigeria) … was one of the first Africans to live through chattel slavery and write about it. …
"The first time the young lad set eyes on a slave ship, he was terrified. He thought he was brought on board to be eaten by the white men:
‘When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted my fate and quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted...I asked if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces and long hair?’
Conditions on board ship were so bad … many of the kidnapped Africans thought death was preferable to living on a slave ship. Some of the captives jumped into the water, committing suicide. More would have followed had the crew not stopped them."
"Equiano's ship arrived in Barbados. He, and the other captured Africans, were sold as slaves on the Caribbean island. He spent many years at sea as the slave of a naval man. Although he became a freeman in 1766, for the sum of forty pounds sterling, he never saw his family again.
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"Thanks to the Library of Congress, you can read an early edition of Equiano's narrative. Initially published in 1789 - when he was Britain's leading abolitionist - Equiano's book asks compelling questions:
'O, ye nominal Christians!' he proclaims. 'Is this what you learned from your God who said to you ‘Do unto all men as you would have them do unto you’?'”
"So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 7:12, cf. Luke 6:31). "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law" (Romans 13:8).
Bow your head, or lose it! That was the command given the residents of Bulo Burto, Somalia. The local Islamic court, under the leadership of Sheik Hussein Barre Rage, has declared that it’s time for the citizens to take their Islamic faith more seriously. Those who do not comply by bowing in prayer 5 times each day will be beheaded. “As Muslims,” said Rage, “we should practice Islam fully, not in part, and that is what our religion enjoins us to do.”
The assumption of this cleric and this court seems to be that forced worship is to be preferred over the freedom the choose to worship. Not according to Jesus: "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks" (John 4:23).