Uganda: Forgiveness or Violence

This post concerns Dateline NBC's Children of war in Uganda as seen on Aug.21, 2005. The link to Dateline's website is provided. Children of Northern Uganda flee in the late afternoons to Gulu to avoid being abducted by Kony's army. Up to 25,000 children sleep in Gulu every night and over 9,000 children have been abducted in the last 12 months. This photo was taken by Marcus Bleasdale.

There is a name of a charismatic leader who has committed atrocities beyond the comprehension of our American minds. His name is Joseph Kony. He claims to be the voice for God and he crushes the spirit of children to gain their allegiance. He and his cronies capture families and in a indescribably deprived ritual will kill the father before the eyes of the children. Then they will mutilate the mother but stop before she is dead. Turning to the children they demand that they kill there own mother or be killed themselves.

By the time the act is over the children, sometimes as young as 8 or maybe even younger have committed two atrocities that will wipe out hope from their lives as they are introduced to a new darkness in the civil war in Uganda as Kony's soldiers. Not only will the kids feel guilty...no, damned for the murder they will lose all hope of redemption in the life to come because they have offended their ancestors and according to the African worldview, ancestors are often the only hope they will ever have.

There are two major fighters in this war who are focused on saving the children. Rev. Sam Childer runs an orphanage in Uganda and is a born again, bible believing Christian who waits for the day to confront Kony face to face. When asked about the confrontation, Childer simply says he will win. He carries a pistol wherever he goes, a loaded rifle on his lap when driving through suspect territory and brags about when he was growing up he loved to fight. I have nothing but respect for him, for not turning a blind eye to the horrors of what Kony is doing and for saving the lives of countless children in a land devoid of hope after a 19 year long civil war.

But then there is Angelina Acheng Atyam. Her own daughter was abducted by Kony's Army. But she believes there is no way for Kony to ever make restitution for his atrocities, he has simply caused to much pain to make up for himself. All she asks is for him to stop, to ask for forgiveness and she will give it to him. She acknowledges she would be trading justice for peace, but then at least so many lives could be spared either from death or the pain of losing the people they love.

Kony's army even offered her her daughter back in exchange for her silence and she refused. Not because she did not love her daughter, but because she knew she was only one of thousands who had the same pain and so asked, "What about them?" Later her daughter would escape and they would be reunited.

In such brutality I begin to wonder if a nonviolent movement against the civil war would actually work against someone like Kony. I don't know. What I do know is that nonviolence would be the path that remained most faithful to God's call if, and only if, it was not mistaken as an excuse to do nothing. Courage and transformation can take place, and it can happen even when the revolution is nonviolent.

Please pray for Uganda and Rev. Childer and especially the message of peace that Angelina brings to a nation that has forgotten the word.

Penetrating the Abyss

My Traitor's Heart by Rian Malan is a book that chronicles many of the horror stories that occurred in South Africa under the Apartheid regime. Though often disturbing, the book really chronicles how awful humanity can really be toward one another.

The purpose for this post, however, is about how brutal Africans were toward one another during the political unrest in South Africa in the mid to late 80's. Though no blame can be taken from the Apartheid regime for they created the system which divided African families, it was unnerving to find that Africans were directly responsible for triple the amount of deaths than Afrikaners during the unrest. The mutilations, torture and anger that seethed in the skin of all of South Africa should be a warning to all people of what we are capable of as human beings.

All over the continent of Africa there is civil war, violence, rape and a brutality unmatched in most places of the world today. But we would be mistaken to believe that that spirit of division and violence is "over there" on the Dark Continent. No, it is within us all.

When we fail to realize this single point or even fail to act upon the recognition, forgiveness is forgone, a mercy drought occurs and love is hindered by the blame we place on "the other" for our pain.

But to recognize that we are in need of the same grace our enemy needs, that we need forgiveness as much as "the other" and that "the other," no matter how appalling their crime, is our brother and/or sister we will begin to learn what it means to love like Christ and that love will penetrate the darkest abyss.

The Violence Within Us

Lately I have been reading Walter Wink's Jesus and nonviolence: A Third Way. As I was reading it Wink makes a wise decision in making the reader examine himself with the understanding that as much as we hope to fight violence with nonviolence we cannot forget that violence is within us all as a result of the fall and to fail to recognize our own darkness from within we will risk becoming self-righteous.

I suppose we would be like the Pharisees having abided by the written law but really being white washed tombs and dead.

Please, YHWH, keep us from becoming self righteous in our quest for your justice to reign in the hearts of all people. May we come to the cross, may we follow you through the fires but may we always do so not by our might or even our will but by your Holy Spirit. In Jesus name, Amen.

Toys That Kill

We live in a free society where capitalism is praised for our wealth and consumerism is the opium of the masses. This will not be a plea to change the law of the land, to impose more rules that do little in actually shaping the character of a person or a country. No, this is for Christian parents out there and anyone else with some common sense of dignity. Please, do not buy your children toy guns.

It may be our right to bear arms as Americans. Every good American boy or girl should grow up playing cowboys and Indians. After all the United States began with a genocide of Native peoples; it's in our blood. But we are Christians first. Christians who are suppose to think others more highly than ourselves (even if that in and of itself might be anti-American) and who are suppose to love our enemies.

The problems with toy guns is that they help children pretend and fantasize about a violent world. It's fun and cool to be a marksman with a b.b. gun and to run in the woods pretending to shoot one another. Accept it is a fantasy that continues to indoctrinate our children into a world where we return evil for evil and that fails to love their enemies. I can imagine Jesus having a crisis as a kid pretending to kill a friend when he knowns himself to be the author of life.

Not until Columbine did the seriousness of guns really hit middle class suburban homes. Unfortunately I heard one student who had lived through the massacre and had friends among the 14 dead defending Grand Theft Auto, a game where you randomly shoot anyone you want and receive points for it. Because it is considered virtual reality it is OK because it isn't real.

Or is it? There is a difference in pretending to kill someone and actually killing them. I agree. But life is a process of spiritual formation, violence is a spiritual act, just how are we forming our spirit when we visit all these virtual worlds? As many instances in our recent history has proved, that line between reality and fantasy eventually gets blurred and another person is dead after a bar fight or over a pair of shoes. Maybe it won't be everybody, but isn't just one enough?