Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 31, 1994 TAG: 9407290014
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cody Lowe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In churches throughout the world today, millions of Christians are offering up prayers for peace and healing in Rwanda.
The request to set aside this day apparently originated with the All Africa Conference of Churches. It asked for special prayers, special sermons, special offerings to help dam the flood of human misery loosed in that central African nation.
It is a respectable, time-honored tradition to turn to prayer when other solutions to big problems seem hopeless. The formula has changed a bit, though, over the years.
A bit more than a century ago, as Abraham Lincoln faced the possibility of seeing the nation he'd been elected to lead severed into two hostile countries, he called for prayer. For those of us who have heard modern leaders - secular and religious - call for divine intervention in the more sordid affairs of humans, Lincoln's call for "humiliation, fasting and prayer" seems almost quaint.
Asking the people to "confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow," Lincoln wrote: "inasmuch as we know that by His Divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?"
Such a view is not popular today. We resent being told that national "calamities" may be the result of sin. Indeed, it is offensive to most of us to suggest that a natural disaster - a hurricane, say - is a visitation from an angry God.
On the other hand, to allege that the horrors of war are a "punishment" - or at least a consequence - of sinful behavior seems justifiable.
But not only would no secular leader go so far today as to call on the Rwanda Patriotic Front members to repent of their sin, few religious leaders seem willing to spend much time doing that either.
The All Africa Conference of Churches, for instance, passed on a lot of information about the as many as 500,000 dead in Rwanda, the 2 million to 3 million refugees. It asked Christians to set regular times of prayer, perhaps establish a monetary fund, and to "seek information on what your government is doing about the situation in Rwanda."
"It is our prayer," said the conference General Secretary Jos Belo Chipenda, "that this call for a Day of Prayer and Healing will also serve as a campaign which will challenge us all to focus on being partners with God in bringing healing to the nation of Rwanda."
Other national and international religious organizations have joined a chorus of condemnation. Many have called on the warring factions to stop the killing, but all too often blame is assigned to some vague "decay in international solidarity" rather than to the warring parties who have chosen to slaughter each other.
The head of the Lutheran World Federation, for instance, offered this: "If it takes the United Nations three months of discussion, half a million dead and 3 million refugees in order to be able to muster an effective peacekeeping initiative, then something is dramatically wrong with our sense of responsibility in the global village and for a new world order."
A group of Anglican bishops in Rwanda expressed disappointment that United Nations troops were withdrawn from the country. "We were in great need ... and they left us there killing each other and in danger."
How soon we forget the vilification of U.N. forces that followed their "humanitarian mission" in Somalia.
Many of us wish we could flex our muscles and frighten away the bad guys without having to throw a punch. Once we strike, we fear, we become a tool of satanic power ourselves.
That's just what happened in Somalia. Using even limited force to help distribute food and hold off the warlords made the United Nations forces into the enemy of the people they were trying to help.
It is a classic no-win scenario.
In Rwanda, we have religious people asking for at least the threat of military force to counter the evil of civil war and genocide. In Haiti, we have religious people urging the world to refrain from military intervention because they fear war will bring worse destruction than the people there now face.
So, in our hopelessness, we turn, finally, to prayer.
We pray for peace, but remember that we must be the instruments of peace.
We pray for justice, but remember we must administer justice.
We pray for wisdom and understanding, but remember we are imperfect and fallible.
We pray for healing, but remember we sometimes misdiagnose our ills.
by CNB