By Adam E. Heironimus
I recently read a book by Zach Hunter called “Be the Change” it is as the subtitle reads “Your guide to freeing slaves and changing the world” but it is also much more: every chapter has a main character quality that is focused on in that chapter such as courage, compassion or leadership and then several stories of people who put that certain quality to good use in their lives; in the chapter titled ”Compassion” he profiled the orphanage builder George Muller and the Nobel prize winning Mother Teresa. The main purpose of this book is of course to help free modern day slavery but I found that it was helpful to me just as a teenager looking for ways that I could try to make a difference. That’s the second part of the subtitle “Changing the world” and as Zach mentioned earlier in his book it’s kind of hard to help free slaves without changing the world and if you help change the world by telling people about the only person who can bring true freedom, pretty soon you will find that many of the world’s problems (including slavery) will be solved. Probably one of my favorite quotes from the book (and there were many good ones) was by Martin Niemoller, a German leader of the Confessing Church who was held in a Nazi concentration camp from 1937 to 1945. After he was released he wrote this poem about the need to stand against evil:
“First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time
there was no one left to speak up for me.”
I thought that that summed up the reasons of why we should take a stand for what is right and fight against what we know to be evil.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to make a difference in their life,family,community or even the world. One of the really cool things about this book was the fact that it was written by a 15 year old- and I kept forgetting it because it was so well written! Using the 5 star ranking system I would give this book a solid 5 out of 5
“Be the Change” is available at Amazon.com and at many other physical and online bookstores worldwide.
