Genocide--Where Was God?

Imagine what it would be like if you went to an all-boys middle or high school where there were two categories of people--people with green eyes and people with blue eyes. That's it--just two types. Other than eye color, everybody looked the same--same race, same lifestyles, same morals.

Imagine what it would be like if the blue eyed people decided that they were the superior group of people simply because of their eye color and that in order to maintain their position of power in the school, they would need to kill all of the green eyed people? Worse, the high school administrators got involved and actually endorsed, sanctioned and encouraged the blue eyed kids to kill most of  their  green eyed friends.

Horrifying, right?

And to add to the insanity, mentally picture local radio announcers getting involved and calling for mass execution of the green eyed people--inciting riots and untold violence against not only the green eyed people, but against their parents, siblings and grandparents. Imagine that the blue eyed kids were encouraged to burn the green eyed kids' houses, to level their parents' businesses and euthanize their pets. In this scary scenario, The blue eyed kids would feel justified in their killing, because after all, they believed that they were the superior race. Their eye color, they believed, were given to them straight from God.


An over the top B-rated horror movie? A skit from Saturday Night Live?

Not quite. This scenario DID happen--in a little African country called Rwanda in 1994. Some 800,000 Rwandans, mainly Tutsis, were murdered during a 100-day period following the assassination of the Hutu president of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana. Many of the Tutsis were killed by their Hutu neighbors with knives and machetes--in plain daylight. In some cases, money was promised as a reward for killing. (See the pictures below of a Tutsi and Hutu woman and note very similar outward appearances).
Here's the strange thing--the Tutsis and Hutus have more in common as a people than not. Their long-standing conflict has nothing to do with religion or language-- they speak the same Bantu tongues as well as French, and generally practice Christianity -- and many geneticists have been hard-pressed to find marked ethnic differences between the two, though the Tutsi have generally been noted to be taller.


Generally, the Hutu-Tutsi strife stems from class warfare, with the Tutsis perceived to have greater wealth and social status (as well as favoring cattle ranching over what is seen as the lower-class farming of the Hutus). The Tutsis are thought to have originally come from Ethiopia, and arrived after the Hutu came from Chad.


The international community (including the U.S. and the United Nations) did little to stop the killings and the slaughter was brought to end by the military defeat of the government by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a Tutsi-led rebel group. It's been said that although the U.S. had intelligence of the genocide as it was happening, our government did nothing to stop the slaughter, as we had no interests there (Rwanda is without mineral wealth or strategic placement).

Where was God during all of this?


Right there.


Right there comforting the toddler who watched her parents being killed in front of her very own eyes.


Right there with the newlyweds whose neighbors suddenly decided that they were the enemy.


Right there providing hope to the grieving widows and orpans.


He says in His word that we are to care for widows and orphans. James 1:27 says: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.


God gave us free will and we have a choice about whether to trust our own finite thinking or to trust Him. He created us to worship Him, not our own limited viewpoints.



We are to love your neighbor and to pray for your enemies. We see the outward appearance, but God sees our hearts.


Seek to see hearts and not eye color.


Based on 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, say out loud:

With the Lord's help, I am patient, I am kind. I do not envy, I do not boast, I am not proud. I am not rude, I am not self-seeking, I am not easily angered, I keep no record of wrongs. I do not delight in evil but rejoice with the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

To help:
www.help-rwanda.com

www.worldvision.org/rwanda

www.womenforwomen.org