The Obligations of Witnessing

Many years ago, I worked in a little religious school. One of the children could barely speak. She had many siblings. She came to school with bruises. One day she accidentally fell out of the car. I told the principal that we should report the situation. I was told that it wasn’t our business and that reporting them to government authorities wasn’t right. I still anonymously reported them. My employment ended soon thereafter. I guess suspicion that I had called Child Protective Services was enough.

These are hard situations. We’re tempted to decrease the volume on our internal Early Warning System, our sense that things aren’t quite right. There’s a lot of reasons we do this.

• Involvement Fear - It’s not my business.
• Retaliation Anxiety - He’s in a position to hurt my ____ (fill in the blank).
• Keeping the Family Peace - It will destroy my family if this gets out.
• Dogma and Ideology - But our religion says it’s a Church matter.
• Futility - What can I do? Everyone who has the power is already in control. I’ll lose and there’s no point.

There really might be no reason to worry. But, turning off the Early Warning System in the presence of tangible behaviors robs us of our own power and autonomy. It not only hurts the immediate participants but it hurts the observers, too. Being a witness brings with it obligations to respond. The fragile network of society survives only when we go from witnessing to bearing witness.