I arrived safely in Cape Town. Was able to lie down for a while to rest my back and then got about 30 minutes of sleep before leaving for the conference. The first session was outstanding. It was a look at the Rwanda genocide and then a post genocide project for identifying the victims, evaluating what went on and then working through a catalogue of issues important for the restoration of people and country. The speaker was from England and had been responsible for setting up a Holocaust museum in England. He was then tasked with developing the genocide museum in Kigali, Rwanda. I sensed as he spoke that he as not very hopeful about the future.
A woman, who identified herself as an evangelical Christian, presumed that the speaker was a person of Christian faith and how did his faith give him hope. He replied rather caustically that he grew up in a Christian home, in which his parents supported missions to Rwanda. During the 1970s there was a great time of fruitfulness in ministry in Rwanda, people were coming to Christ and on into the 80s. But then in 1994, the genocide broke out and in 1996-97 retaliatory kilings. He said, Rwanda was very religious and then mass murder took place, "don't talk to me about faith."
He then acknowledged his own crisis of faith triggered by constantly dealing with people killing people . . . going through people's personal effects for identification . . . I actually came away saying to myself, "evil has overcome good in his life." I don''t fault him. I've had my own crises of faith as I read the Old Testament and of the mass killings and God's judgement on people. I still rest uneasily with all that I read.
But I also know that when we have the gospel, if we have nothing else we have hope. As I have talked with genocide survivors, I am not only blown away by the depth of pain and loss that they expereience, but also by the hopefulness of so many of them. They tell courageous stories-stories of personal sacrifice for the benefit of others; stories of forgiveness; of living and taking each day as it comes. There is reason for hope and the reason is a person . . . Jesus.
I believe that the gospel gives us reason for hope in this life and certainly the hope of all things being made new in te future.
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