Pray For Sudan

Okay...so it's now happening...what I honestly thought would never happen in this city. In case you didn't hear yet: Hate-possessed Muslims (Islamists?) went to a church school and boys' home this past Friday, vandalized the buildings and tried to burn it all down -- in our own part of town.

After prayers on Friday afternoon, a mob from a rabble-rousing mosque stormed toward a small compound, on which the Catholic church had built a dormitory for poor and orphaned boys; a Bible school to educate them and other potential leaders; and a small prayer chapel. While reportedly shouting (in Arabic), "No churches any more -- No Christianity anymore," the mob set fire to the little buildings and burned everything -- clothes, books, Bibles... everything. (Apparently, someone got word to the inhabitants in time, and they fled.) For four years I have repeatedly asserted that nothing like this would ever happen here, in this city. Even while churches and schools are routinely bombed and burned in the rural areas (as the government claims they are "potential rebel hideouts"); I have never seen nor felt this kind of anti-Christian sentiment here in the city, a seeming oasis of popular (if not political) humaneness. This weekend, I was proven wrong. (At least somewhat.) The ever-present minor faction of psychotic extremists have obviously been emboldened by recent events. They did all this evil in broad daylight, apparently without fear of punishment. Local fellowships are trying to collect clothes for the boys, and money to relocate them...somewhere. (I am struck dumb by the banality of that sentence. God help me.)

 

Fortunately, in what the enemy means for evil, the Lord is already acting for Good. By the next day (Saturday), outraged and dismayed by these sick acts of their countrymen, 400-500 Sudanese people (mainly Muslim, it seems) had mobilized via social media and word-of-mouth. They went en masse to try and clean up the compound; salvage whatever they could; document the atrocity with pictures and video; and formally protest this violent bigotry. Here are a couple of the many statements from the mobilizing Facebook pages:

"When I heard yesterday that some people here had burned a church..., I didn't believe it. I never imagined it was true. I thought it was a vicious rumor. To have had it confirmed today was tremendously disappointing. Worse, I heard this action was planned in a mosque. Is this what Islam is? Burning a church that provides services and programs? Becoming hateful toward Southerners because of South Sudanese government's actions? I am disgusted."

"We condemn the attacks on churches in Khartoum and I suggest on this Sunday we join our Christian friends in church and worship with them in solidarity."

"I apologize for every Christian, Muslim, , not religious, and everyone in my country against injustice and dreams of a real homeland ... I apologize to both carry my identity and the identity of the humanity of what happened in the compound of our churches yesterday from the burning and destruction by the tourniquet of the Islamic Conference and the national and those who supported it."

"I refuse this shameful behavior which does not resemble the behavior of Muslims right!!!!!!!!!!!"

Those last two statements are computer-generated translations from Arabic to English; I'm sure you get the gist. There are also intelligent debates by Muslims about whether the perpetrators can/should be considered "real Muslims." (Such discussions are familiar to Christians when faced with the un-Christ like behavior of believers.)

I myself am not ready to move past outrage. I am very angry, sad, shocked and scared -- not scared for myself or my family -- scared of seeing just how devilish human beings can become. The Lord God is already far ahead of me, bringing redemption. But I myself just want everybody in the world to yell and scream and curse about these sick disgusting acts of violence against the hopes of innocent boys and young men trying to better their lives by faith in the Gospel and God's Word. How long, Lord, will you put up with this?! Where are these boys supposed to live now?! What are they supposed to do?! Anyway. Don't mind me. Just pray, please. 

 

AP News Stroy Link

 

From our missionaries in the Sudan

Hungering for God in Your Own Heart Language

It's not OK with me that pastors and churches try to make disciples without having the Bible in a language that gets under the skin and into the bones and muscles of their people.  They are like herdsmen  who think they are giving their herds good grass but are actually giving them indigestion and gas. Sometimes this happens within our own culture, where we have several sub-cultures and different ways of speaking about everyday things.  If you want someone to think you are from another planet, then don't learn to express the Gospel in new ways that are relevant to the way people around you think and speak.

This also happens outside of our culture, where the languages and cultures of the world without any part of the Bible number about 2,000.  If you want churchgoers in Africa or Asia or anywhere to see Christ as an alien from another planet (maybe named Israel) or someone else's culture (such as Western), if you want people to think there is magic in Christianity and they need to be initiated into how to make it work, then keep the Bible in a foreign language.  That's also a great aid to syncretism and sects.

But if they learn English, or French, or Spanish, or Portuguese, or Chinese, or Russian etc in school, they are already using those languages to study school subjects, get a job, learn a trade or run a business.  Isn't that enough with the Bible too?  Enough for what? For learning about love and sin and sacrifice and forgiveness?  For expressing trust and confidence and joy and forgiveness and love and wholehearted commitment?  Do we want disciples trained as though knowing Jesus and following him were a matter of acquiring skills and habits the same way they learn to become a carpenter?  Such learning may lead to success and getting ahead, but does it touch the whole person, created in the image of God?

Where does discipling happen? In isolated parts of life that do not touch the thoughts and emotions? So many are still waiting to know that their hungers, no matter how deep, are already known and provided for by the Creator God of the universe, and that He speaks the language of their thoughts and emotions.

Nancy Haynes is a missionary with Wycliffee bible Translotrs in Cameroon