A Living Sacrifice

I am a middle-class, white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes living in America in the 21st century. I know nothing of any type of adversity. Lots of you reading this are exactly the same.

We live in terms of "in here" and "out there," where real worldly struggles never knock on our doors, and so many people never develop the empathy to understand, to care, or to act. I suppose my life of leisure is why wars were fought in the last century,  but that can never excuse apathy.

We certainly can't imagine a society in the first world in which girls are refused an education. And so many people living in first-world countries take education forgranted. When my students were being especially bratty and whiny, I would ask them, "Did you get shot by the government on the bus coming to school today? Do you come to a school with heating and food?" Yeah, I'm that girl. And I think people who become annoyed by those comments know deep down that I'm right.

Because they could never imagine how other people struggle in this world. As my husband says, we see in Pakistan and Afghanistan what our world would look like if we literally were still trying to live by the Bible.

As I read an excerpt from Malala Yousafzai's memoir, I realized that her father was a political activist. As in, not just talking or writing or blogging or Facebooking or Twittering or even Tweeting, but in acting. As Dr. King often taught, Malala's father was directly involved in provoking creative tension. Society will not change without tension, the kind of tension that creates a new possibility. Forcing people to take notice, to empathize, and the hardest of all requests, to change. In this case, that meant sending his daughter to school in spite of what that might incite.

And it suddenly crystallized in my brain: he knew that she could be murdered. Her father. Knew that. And she went to school anyway. He let her. He told her to. She wanted to.

It literally took my breath away. Is that insanity? Is that cruelty? Or is that faith?

Who of us would put our children's lives on the line for the sake of right? Which of our children would volunteer to go? (The bigger picture here is that we are directed to do this according to our Christian faith, not suggested to as my questions might imply, but I can't even come close to discussing that right now.)

Malala stated in a recent NPR interview that she is no longer scared of death because she has already faced it. However, her father asserted that, "I believe that one should live for a cause which is greater than him. Even if I die, I will continue my campaign, but I will not put her life at stake. That's clear."

He states that he wants to go back to their home in Pakistan because he is needed there and because of the work left to be accomplished, but it seems clear that he's also unwilling to agree to put his own daughter at risk. Which is tricky when you're campaigning for equality. At what point does the personal replace the ideal?

It's one thing to decide that for your own life. The examples throughout history are powerful and still timely. Read "The Letter." King seems to somehow have known he would not live long, and certainly his choices affected his family. But his own children's lives were not the ones on the line. His baby did not sit in jail with him or in his stead. Of course his home was bombed so they were certainly in danger, but he did not carry them to his protests.

As strange as this might sound, I want to read a memoir from Malala's father. How does a person come to decide that in his own struggle between accepting the limits of his world and confronting them, he will potentially ask his children to pay the price?

And of course the broader, more difficult question remains: was it worth it? If Malala were dead right now, have any changes advanced enough to make the sacrifice worthwhile? Or are we called simply to try? One could argue that Dr. King's work still is not complete. We witnessed the Supreme Court striking down part of the Voting Rights Act. States with a history of voting discrimination are no longer required to obtain approval prior to enacting changes in voting procedures (such as redistricting or voter identification laws) because, as Chief Justice John Roberts asserted, "Our country has changed."

Is it that simple? The issue isn't black or white, male or female. As has been stated over and over throughout history, we should all be concerned when we witness any sort of discrimination because at some point in the future, it could be your own rights on the line.

Some people walk this Earth who develop a sense of all-or-nothing, such as King, Mandela, Jesus, Socrates, Bonhoeffer: they come to the realization that they either fight for the truth or accept death because there is no room for them for a halfway life. Ziauddin Yousafzai includes his daughter in this fight, and she agrees. Could he educate her in private while pushing for freedom and equal rights? Do you say to the people you're fighting for, "This issue is important, but is only worth so much?" For we all know that our children are the greatest sacrifice. But our children are also worth everything good that we fight for.