Indifference means a lack of interest or concern about something or anything. It is a disease like the measles and it is “catching” as my mother use to say. I get infected with indifference occasionally when I ask myself why I get so upset over things I can’t do much about. “Why bother” is a symptom of the disease. Why bother at this stage of life to argue a point, or to try to make a difference, or to protest? Why waste my energy? Why worry about things that will probably happen after I’m dead and gone? It won’t really affect me, so why bother to be engaged?
Elie Wiesel reminds me this morning that indifference is one of the worse diseases ever to infect our hearts, minds and souls. It is the worse disease ever to infect a community, a society, or a nation.
“The opposite of love is not hate,” Wiesel wrote, “it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
It is so easy to become infected with indifference, to have no interest or concern about what is going on around us. I have my family. I’m comfortable. Who cares what is happening in the wider world as long as I’m comfortable. This happened in Germany, Austria, Poland, Amsterdam, and other places in a time not long past. They were indifferent to the rumors that people were being rounded up, put in cattle cars, and taken to concentration camps. They had no interest or concern to check it out—to verify it. Why bother, they said. Six million people (men, women and children) died hideous deaths, but those who failed to pay attention, those who were indifferent to it all, also died hideous deaths—“a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.”
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