There are some horrible things occurring in Western Burma right now. The Rohingya, an ethnic group of Burma that is primarily Muslim, have never had it easy. The past in year particular has seen the displacement of over 145,000 people amidst fighting. On 14 January the government of Burma issued a verbal order that all Muslim males aged 10 and over be arrested.
This is heartbreaking to us–as a couple, as an organization, and hopefully as a society.
I am currently reading through Metaxas’ biography Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. As a pastor and leader in the German Christian Church, Bonhoeffer became a part of the conspiracy to kill Hitler. I found this quote last night, which he wrote in a Christmas card to a friend in December 1940 (p.373):
“It is not war that first brings death,
not war that first invents the pains and torments of human bodies and souls,
not war that first unleashes lies, injustice, and violence.
It is not war that first makes our existence so utterly precarious
and renders human beings powerless,
forcing them to watch their desires and plans
being thwarted and destroyed by more “exalted powers.”
But war makes all of this,
which existed already apart from it and before it,
vast and unavoidable to us who would gladly prefer to overlook it all.”
I find this horrifically true. There is so much we prefer to pretend doesn’t exist in our broken world and broken souls: the lies, pain, and injustice in all of us. The death that makes us mortal; the futility that all creation was subjected to (Romans 8:20). But we prefer to ignore these horrible attributes, we pretend that we aren’t in bondage and we aren’t groaning for something else.
And then there is war, which just shows us what we are all made of.
It’s not just what they are made of: not just crazy government leaders or extremist protestors or radicals. It is in each and every one of us, it is around each and every one of us. Brokenness of what we were meant to be, a battle of our own choices and desires and something outside of ourselves. War just causes us to see the sin we prefer to overlook.
And as we look toward the situation in Western Burma–as we see creation hurting creation, as we pray and try to determine our role {as a couple, as an organization, and hopefully as a society}–we see that it is nothing new. It is nothing we are not capable of ourselves. And it is still nothing that any of us wants to address.
But maybe it is better for us to see our powerlessness,
so that we can recognize the power of God.
Maybe it is better for us to see our precariousness,
so that we depend on something outside of ourselves.
Maybe it is better to see the things we would prefer to overlook,
so that we are reminded to do what is good.
“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Micah 6:8