excerpts from an article by Andy Brown
Rwanda has seen about the worst mankind has to offer. The 1994 genocide left over 800,000 Rwandans dead. But today, though much pain still remains, there are signs of hope. “Rather than blame God for their problems, [Rwandans] look to Him for solutions and recognize the need to depend on Him in a way that they never have before,” says AIM’s Bruce Rossington, who teaches at the Rwanda Institute of Evangelical Theology (RIET). “Nominal Christianity has had its day here. Ninety percent of the country was ‘Christian’ before 1994, but too many churches now serve as memorials for that statistic to be taken seriously.”
In 1994, over 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the span of three months. Killed not by a bomb or weapon of mass destruction, but by many weapons of small destruction; garden tools mostly. Killed not so much by an army, like the genocide of WWII, but by neighbor turning against neighbor. This is a hard fact to ignore while walking the streets of Kigali, even fourteen years after the Rwandan genocide. You find yourself subtracting fourteen years from the age of each person you meet, imagining the atrocities they witnessed as a child, or worse, the atrocities they may have committed. For a country with a population of only eight million, the death of over 800,000 at the hands of their neighbors means nobody was unaffected. Everybody who survived lost somebody, if not their whole family. Many witnessed rape or murder at close range. Most had their lives threatened. You can still sense the tension and hurt and pain people are carrying.
So as I walked the streets of Kigali, I found myself asking, “Where does that kind of hatred come from? How can people harbor such animosity – a hatred that pitted neighbor against neighbor?”
As I considered this, I realized we all carry this capacity within us. There is very little separating us. “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment,” said Jesus in Matthew 5:21-22. My sin has earned the same penalty as the man who cut down his neighbor in the middle of the night. We both earned eternal separation from God. Mercifully, my debt has been paid and I won’t have to pay that eternal price, although my sins still earn me my share of consequences. The people of Rwanda will be dealing with the consequences of their own actions for a long, long time.
We were in Rwanda to produce a video about a Bible college, the Rwanda Institute of Evangelical Theology. This college was created after the genocide by the evangelical churches of Rwanda to train pastors to help heal the nation and mature its believers. It’s the only evangelical Bible college in the country accepting students from any denomination. Hence the students come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. We interviewed one student who had to fend off wave after wave of militia coming to kill the hundreds of people seeking shelter in the church where he pastored. We also interviewed students who were pastors in 1994 but knew little of the Bible, or what a life transformed by Christ looked like. People in their own congregations committed unspeakable atrocities. Today these pastors are studying God’s word – in part to divest the insidious hatred that still divides victim and aggressor.
In a church in Nyamata, I stood in a crypt filled with the skulls and femurs of the ten thousand people who were killed there. The bloodstains are still on the walls, and the clothing of the victims that fills the benches of the church still carries the stench of death and decay. It was overwhelming, not just the sight and smell, but surrounding myself with something so terrible. As hard as it was to take in, I’m glad I was able to see it, to get a greater sense of the kind of evil that lives in the hearts of men. To get a greater sense of the battle we are engaged in, which is mostly unseen but occasionally has visible manifestations like the Rwandan genocide. Surrounded by those bones, visualizing the magnitude of what had happened there, I had a real sense of Satan’s involvement. The organizational effort to kill over 800,000 people in just 100 days has his fingerprints all over it.
“For,” wrote Paul in Ephesians 6:12-13, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” Or, as King Hezekiah encouraged his troops in II Chronicles 32:7-8 : “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged because of the [king] and the vast army with him, for there is a greater power with us than with him. With him is only the arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles.” These are encouraging words, both for myself and for my Rwandan brothers and sisters at the Rwanda Institute of Evangelical Theology who must play a critical role in the nation’s recovery. There is a greater power with us.
Be sure to watch the video on our Home Page titled, “So We Do Not Lose Heart”
