More Active Posts
Front Page
One shirt for one back
 |
 3 Comments |
My friend has been involved in Rwanda, both with mission work and in trying to help people develop trades and small businesses. This was the country that in 1994 saw nearly 1,000,000 slaughtered in tribal violence, though it got less media attention in the U.S. than the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding saga, Lorena Bobbitt’s sharp-edged revenge, or Kurt Cobain’s suicide. As Stalin not only quipped, but could testify to first-hand: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
My friend passed along to me some news items about large-scale efforts by churches and government agencies to promote reconciliation and education. This got me to thinking about the dyadic nature of reconciliation — the reality that while large organizations can sponsor educational lectures and conferences and committees, there is only violence when one man strikes down another, and hence only reconciliation when a man can look at someone who was once his enemy and not want to spill his blood.
That isn’t to belittle the efforts by people like Rick Warren, whose Saddleback Church has a major initiative in Rwanda. It’s to underscore, instead, the hopelessness of man’s efforts to change the nature of himself. Men butcher one another by the millions with ease, but how much effort must it take not to kill those who have killed ones you love? Violence is a conflagration, but peace, it seems, is the slow mending of a single heart at a time. We should thank God that He is the surgeon, and not we.
My friend also directed me to this video of a trip he and some others took with Christian artist Sara Groves to Rwanda. I’m struck by his simple, faithful, seemingly hopeless act of love: one man giving another his shirt, as if a single shirt can erase the terror and suffering, as if a single shirt can heal the heart of man.
It can’t, but by the grace of God, maybe it can become more than just one shirt on one scarred back. We don’t know, do we? But we give our shirts nonetheless, those among us faithful enough to believe in lost causes. It’s certainly not enough, in a place where one million souls cry out from the dirt. But maybe that’s how God works, and has always worked, by taking the futile gestures of faithful men and fashioning them into great, grace-filled things.
 |
Topic: Front Page, The World |  |
Email a friend |
 |
Keywords: missions, Rwanda |  |
RSS 2.0 |
 |
Both comments and pings are currently closed. |  |
Share this: |
Reporters? choice
Tony, I appreciate your posts because they bring up more questions than answers. Understanding has always been for me the place to start coming up with genuine solutions.
Although I know that there is a time to think and talk and then a time for action, I fear that many of us jump to action prematurely or too late. Discernment and timing are critical.
Over the years I have become more systematic and intentional in how I address issues. I have found more fulfillment on both sides of the equation as a result of it. I feel more content, and my actions are actually having more impact.
Thanks for the post.
Tony, you make a very good point here:
“While large organizations can sponsor educational lectures and conferences and committees, there is only violence when one man strikes down another, and hence only reconciliation when a man can look at someone who was once his enemy and not want to spill his blood.”
This past summer, I found myself on a dusty Rwandan road watching a young man–a genocide survivor who lost all but one sister in the slaughter–embracing one of the men who killed members of his family.
Earlier, I drove down a bumpy road with a woman who had just six months earlier publicly forgiven the man who had hacked her father to death with a machete.
Now, 14 years past the genocide, much of Rwanda still teems with the battle wounds of unforgiveness and bitterness, but I can assure you that there are those who are not only able to look at an enemy and not spill his blood, but go so far as to embrace him, offer him money, and pray for him. I saw it six feet away.
Yes, the government is doing much to help, but I personally believe it’s faith-based organizations like Prison Fellowship Rwanda (www.pfi.org) and CARSA (www.carsa.org.rw/carsa%20english.htm) that are making the greatest impact in reconciling victims and offenders.
Filmmaker Laura Waters Hinson has just released an groundbreaking documentary on this type of reconciliation in Rwanda. Check out the trailer: http://www.asweforgivethose.com/?page_id=10
not tribal violence but genocide of one group over an other. The use of the term tribal violence implies it was a fight between two warring sides and that was not the case.