Did anybody watch Go Back To Where You Came From? It was a 3 part doco on SBS about 6 Australians who get taken on a journey to different parts of the world to experience the plight of refugees and boat people.I didn't catch all of it, some of the first ep, and then all of the last, but I thought it was really great. It was also very heart-wrenching. It should be compulsory viewing for every Australian. Being on SBS though, it was probably to an extent preaching to the converted.
It's easy to say of the contestants, 'tsk tsk you were so bigoted', and also of the AM talkback radio listening and Today Tonight watching public 'you should be watching this.' but I also found it pretty convicting personally.
I'm often way too apathetic, not taking enough notice of the terrible plight that people are going through around the world, and closer to home. And not only that, I'm often in a state of ho hum about my own life circumstances, rather than seeing daily how richly blessed I am, and just how much I have to thank God for.
3 comments:
Yeah, amazing tv, Ben. I spent a few years visiting asylum seekers in detention here in Melbourne and once you've heard people's heartbreaking stories you can't ever dismiss asylum seekers as 'queue jumpers' or 'economic migrants' ever again. Nobody gets on those boats if they aren't truly desperate. And those people waiting in Malaysia, with their kids all cooped up - just so horrible.
I also think it takes us beyond the issue of asylum seekers to think about what we as Christians are doing to respond to the terrible inequality in the world. At the end of the doco, that ex-army fella declared that he couldn't be held responsible for all the poverty in the world. That's true, but a squiz at history will tell you that the causes of inequity link us closely together - imperial powers screwed Much of Africa and Asia over pretty thoroughly and left a legacy of ethnic conflict and poverty which multinationals continue to exploit. We can't pretend our wealth is unrelated to their poverty - responding to their need is about justice as well as charity.
Sadly, I don't bother with SBS normally because our reception is so dodgy. Interestingly we just spent a weekend at the Sunshine Coast in a motel with an analogue TV and I managed to see some SBS shows there.
I wanted to watch it, but it was, ironically, geo-blocked.
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