Be angry but…

It’s not easy to remain unperturbed by the events in our world. As I write this, Boko Haram has attacked another town in Northern Nigeria. Behind the statistics of the dead and wounded are precious lives; fathers, mothers, sons, daughter, friends… 

My cousin’s husband is a soldier stationed in one of those areas, and every day she fears for his life, just as we do too. What’s happening there is unfair and evil. No one deserves such horror, yet innocent people are going through that on a daily basis. What can we do as Christians? Pretend everything is well or seethe with rage?

Some time last year, I became overwhelmed by anger. As I read about the atrocities of Boko Haram, ISIS and Al-Shabab, I lost it. I became very bitter. I had just read a survivor’s story of the brutal execution at the hands of one of these groups and I was livid! The whole day I walked around with rage in my heart and great bitterness. Verses from the Bible reminding me of anger and prayers did not dissuade me from this course. I refused to accept Biblical injunctions that said, “pray for your enemies…” I felt like cursing them instead. If I could, I would have prophesied instant and brutal death on them!

The Gradual Descent to Evil

As the world remembers the Holocaust, the word evil has been used often to describe the genocide of Jews and other people at the hands of Nazi Germans. 

Regular folks like us usually associate evil acts with equally evil and savage peoples. The reality is quite different; a picture I saw recently convinced me of that.

Some months ago I saw a very disturbing picture in a World War 2 book. A mother was clutching her toddler tightly, she was slightly bent and had an expression of anticipated pain. Behind her stood a Nazi officer with his gun pointed at them, ready to fire hot lead into their bodies. What was their crime? They were Jews. Simple.