A Liquid Solution, A Chemical Fusion, All I Can Dream of Is You

One of my favorite things about this year has been the chance to sit by sister in church. We are both very busy and do not get to see each other a lot during the week, but we have been able to sit by each other during worship and share a very special time together.

Tonight as I continue reading We Wish to Inform You... by Gourevtich, I am struck again by the seeming impossibility of the depths of human hatred and cruelty. In the beginning of the book, Gourevitch talks about the historical setting that set the place for the 1994 genocide, and describes the level of systematic planning and propaganda that led Tutsis in Rwanda to be labeled as "cockroaches" by the ruling Hutu majority. The Hutu leadership of Rwanda even went as far as to craft fake acts by Tutsis revolutionaries in order to massacres hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. They went through the process of forcing everyone in the country to register with the government according to their ethnic background. This registration was later used to go from city to city, neighborhood to neighborhood, and house to house systematically slaughtering Tutsis and Hutus who opposed the rule of a tyrannical regime.

We have no conception of what this would be like in America, and maybe that is how we can still only imagine what happened there in our deepest nightmares. It flies in the face of all of our post-modern tendencies to believe that people in a reasonable world could be capable of that kind of hatred towards each other but it was only 11 years ago. What is more, it is still going on today. Mike Cope spoke this morning at church about being overwhelmed by the enormity of injustice and darkness in our world. We sit here in our comfort and are shocked, but we ask "What could I possibly do?"

I think the first step is an awakening that I believe we are currently experiencing in the world at large, and more specifically in Churches of Christ. We are aware that our mission is not to bring people to church, but to go out into the world. I am not sure what everyone is talking about when they describe a church as being "missional", but it seems to be what Jesus was about.

I would love to write more, but I am about to go watch "Hotel Rwanda." I am sure there will be more about this in the days to come.