Phillip Gourevitch, in a recent Talk of the Town column in the New Yorker (June 12, 2006, pp.49-50), said some stinging things about our nation's recent history. Writing about the growing anti-genocide movement in the country he commented on how absurd it is that there had to be one. Shouldn't everyone be against genocide? Certainly, but what is one nation to do when the genocide occurs inside the borders of another nation? Unless that nation is a primary source of fossil fuels, knowing the proper response is not so easy. And so we have a pattern of doing nothing, at least until other factors make the way clearer. He writes:
"Yet it has never been the American way to venture abroad to stop slaughter by force. We entered the Second World War nearly three years into the fight, and then not to save Europe's Jews, but in response to a direct attack on our territory.We did not save Cambodia from itself, and did nothing while eight hundred thousand Rwandans were killed. When Europe was disfigured again by concentration camps and ethnic cleansing, in the Balkans, we waited for years! We have not sent forces into Congo although it has been riddled with massacres in the past decade, nor did we send troops into Sudan during the civil war there that claimed more than a million live's. So it is not surprising that we have stayed out of Darfur. That, truly, is Rwanda's lesson: endangered peoples who depend on us for their salvation stand undefended."?That last line is the one that stings: "Endangered peoples who depend on us for their salvation stand undefended." Without trying to answer Mr. Gourevitch, or discussing the thorny foreign policy issues surrounding the killing fields he mentioned, I think that we can agree that most of us feel a measure of responsibility to help. We are, after all, born of the notion that all humans have certain God-given, inalienable rights, and that one of those is the right to life. We are, at least partially, aware of our great blessings, our great power, and thus our great responsibility.
What stings me about his comments is his choice of the word salvation. He has borrowed a word from theology to emphasize the urgency and the moral dimension of his plea, but what he has emphasized for me is the spiritual urgency and moral demands these killing fields present.
I read once that in the 20th century Communist Regimes were responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million civilians world wide. Although we have no hard statistical data, you and I both know most of those 100 million dead died without the Lord.
Evangelism is the primary work of the church. Is it true that the endangered souls of the world who depend on us to hear about salvation stand undefended? We know to what extent we may answer that question affirmatively. I am challenging us all to act, to give, to pray, to go "so that all the world may be baptized, become disciples, and learn all Jesus has commanded" (Matthew 28.18-20).
We have three mission trips from our congregation this summer: The Hurleys to Fiji, the Youth Group to Biloxi, MS, and the Manns to the Dominican Republic. We are also a sponsoring congregation, through the Bullards, of the most successful mission work in the world. Then there is the world in our own community; over 50 mother tongues spoken in our own little town. There is much to do, and we need not have our passport to do it. We can all participate in World Evangelism.
Endangered peoples depend on us to hear about salvation. Will they remain undefended
