Kony 2012

I've been occasionally following the story of Joseph Kony, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), and their insurgency in northern Uganda since I visited Uganda in 2006. I was only in southern Uganda, with a group of volunteers connected with my church. I posted a couple of stories about that here and here. While I was there I met some people who lived in the north. Some had lived in internally displaced person (IDP) camps. I can't remember how closely they'd been affected by the violence.

So I prayed for the people of northern Uganda. I occasionally looked for news about it and was happy to read about a peace agreement later that same year. Things were never actually settled between the government and the LRA though, and some violence continued, but it decreased.

I read about some of the complexity of the issue of what to do about the LRA, and I wrote something about that here. It had more to do with reconciliation with the kids that had killed people (they had been forced to fight with the LRA), but also looked at how attempts at arresting Joseph Kony could actually perpetuate the violence. Unfortunately the links on that post don't work anymore.

After a while, I stopped looking for news stories about this issue. I can't remember if I ever wrote to anyone in the government about it or if I did anything else to help the situation, but as often happens when people care about events happening far away, I thought about this less and less.

Recently, the "Kony 2012" video produced by Invisible Children has gone viral. Joseph Kony is becoming a household name around the world, and I am reminded that the LRA is still around and that things in northern Uganda still haven't been resolved. I admit I haven't watched most of the video, so I can't comment directly on the video. But I have seen some thoughtful responses, such as this one by Rachel Held Evans. It doesn't give a firm opinion; it looks at the complexity of the issues and tries to avoid idealism and cynicism.

Once again, I'm praying for the people of northern Uganda. I don't know what else I'll do, or what I can do. Maybe I can find a way to advocate for peace, not on Invisible Children's terms, but on the terms of northern Ugandan civilians. Maybe there are other charities to support that work in a more constructive way with the LRA's victims. Does anyone know of any?

How I sometimes feel about politics

Corrupt, you're corrupt,
and Bring corruption to all that you touch.

Hold, you’ll behold,
And beholden for all that you’ve done.

And Spell, cast a spell,
Cast a spell on the country you run.

And risk, you will risk,
You will risk all their lives and their souls.

And burn, you will burn,
You will burn in hell, yeah you’ll burn in hell.
You’ll burn in hell, yeah you’ll burn in hell for your sins.

And our freedom's consuming itself,
What we've become is contrary to what we want
Take a bow.

Death, you bring death and destruction to all that you touch.

Pay, you must pay
You must pay for your crimes against the earth.

Hex, feed the hex
Feed the hex on the country you love

And Beg, you will beg
You will beg for their lives and their souls.

Yeah,
Burn, you will burn,
You will burn in hell, yeah you’ll burn in hell,
You’ll burn in hell, yeah you’ll burn in hell,
Burn in hell, yeah you'll burn in hell for your sins.

 --Muse, Take a Bow

I'm not aiming this song at one particular person, but here's just one example of why I sometimes feel this way.  Canada's government (which could get defeated in the upcoming election, but probably won't be) has proposed detaining many desperate refugees without evidence of crimes.  (There's a good critique of it here.)  I wonder what our evangelical Christian prime minister thinks about the Bible verse that says "Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner" (Exodus 22:21) and other similar verses.  Maybe he picks and chooses which parts of the Bible to apply.  But wait, evangelicals don't simply pick and choose.  They have legitimate reasons for saying certain parts of the Bible don't apply now.  I wonder why that verse doesn't apply.

I'm being tough on the Conservatives right now, but I've got issues with the other parties too.  Hopefully I'll write about a bit of that before the election.

Concerns to do with Wikileaks

I guess we haven't been hearing as much about Wikileaks in the news lately, but I'd like to comment. My overall opinion of that organization is mixed, but I am concerned about some of the response to their activities. Before I get to my main point, I'd like to briefly summarize some points that I've heard on different sides of the issue:

• Whistleblowers are doing society a favour when they expose government or corporate wrongdoing, not when they're revealing other confidential information. (For example, if my employer covered up an environmental incident, I would be protected if I blew the whistle. But if I revealed confidential financial data or details of their proprietary technology, I could be fired and maybe even sued.) These diplomatic cables that Wikileaks revealed are mostly confidential conversations between officials, not evidence of wrongdoing.
  
• In the past, Wikileaks has exposed some evidence of government wrongdoing, such as a video of American soldiers killing Iraqi civilians and journalists.
• When the media publishes confidential information, it's normally the source that gets punished (if the source can be found), not the media outlet.

My big concern about how authorities are treating Wikileaks is this: their simplest means of raising money are being cut off without proof in court that their activities are illegal. Mastercard, Visa, and Paypal all cut off Wikileaks from accepting donations by credit card, supposedly because the money was being used for illegal activities. While I agree that these companies shouldn't be facilitating illegal activities, the legal status of Wikileaks is murky. Their guilt has not been proven in court. What would you think if you got fired from your job and your bank account got suspended because someone from the government told your employer and your bank that you were doing something illegal, but you never had a chance to defend yourself in court? What's happening to Wikileaks seems similar to me.

Mastercard, Visa, and Paypal are for-profit corporations that collectively control a very large portion of the world's electronic financial transactions. I am concerned about the level of control that Mastercard and Visa in particular have over the world's financial transactions, but that's a topic for another day. But when most of your communication is online and your potential income comes from donations from around the world, you're crippled if these three companies refuse to deal with you. These companies shouldn't be allowed to cut organizations off like this without due process.

(Sources: I got some information here from Wikipedia.)

Abolition

In 1865, the USA abolished slavery.

In 1971, Canada officially abolished nuclear weapons.

In 1973, Iceland abolished the letter z.

Gentile Passover

Last Monday I had the privilege of being a part of a combined passover and Easter celebration. Since the last supper that Jesus shared with his disciples before he died was a passover meal, combining the two makes sense for Christians.

I'm sure it wasn't the most authentic passover meal. We didn't follow all the instructions in Exodus 12, and that's not even the only source of passover instructions in the Bible. There are also traditions not found in the Bible that Jews follow at the passover.

We cooked lamb over an open fire, outdoors, and we had unleavened bread to go with it. One of the people there had made the unleavened bread, and the lamb was from a halal butcher. (Halal standards are similar to kosher standards.) Some of the conversation was about the passover and Easter, and some was casual conversation about other things. As part of the meal, we took communion together, as Jesus instructed us to do in remembrance of him. It was special to be able to recognize the death and resurrection of Jesus in a way that I'm not used to--a somewhat less ceremonial way that took more time, was more fun, and may have been more like the original Last Supper (in spirit anyway) than our typical communion celebrations.

But there was something disturbing about this too. As we read Exodus 12, verse 12 stuck out to me, in which God says, "On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD." The Israelites' liberation so many years ago required other people to die, or to suffer because someone close to them died. Some of the ones who died would have had very little to do with the Israelites' suffering and oppression, and some were kids. And in the Christian remembrance of Jesus's death, we symbolically commit cannibalism, symbolically eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the one who told us to do that. Or if you follow the Catholic belief in transubstantiation, you're actually metaphysically committing cannibalism, but only because the one who gave his life for you told you to do that.

I believe it's important for religious people to wrestle with the disturbing aspects of our faith, not to just pretend they're not there, or use some semi-satisfying explanation to pretend they're not disturbing.

In both the passover and Easter stories, liberation required someone to die. Is it better that the people who died deserved it (as in some of the Egyptians at the passover), or that the one who died was willing but didn't deserve it?

Maybe we are a threat

For several years, I've subscribed to the Persecution and Prayer Alert from Voice of the Martyrs. Every week, they send news about persecuted Christians, and sometimes they urge their readers to write letters or emails to governments in defense of these persecuted Christians. Once in a while, I've written letters (but I guess it's been a while).

The Voice of the Martyrs website has some letter writing tips and I think they used to have some examples to follow, but I can't find any right now. In an email to a foreign government, I seem to remember saying something like, "The Bible teaches us to submit to our governments and obey the law, so Christians in your country are not a threat to your government," based on a sample letter I'd read. While it's true that as Christians, we are supposed to obey the law when it doesn't mean disobeying God, something about what I said didn't sit right with me, even as I wrote it. Maybe I'd already heard about how the church had been involved in bringing down communism, mostly peacefully, in Poland. Or maybe I realized that when people have a higher loyalty than their own government, that can non-violently undermine a government.

The more time that passes, the less I believe that Christianity is not a threat to oppressive governments. Sometimes I'm not even sure how it works, but when we serve a God who "opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6), oppressive people and institutions can't stand forever. And if God can conquer death by dying, maybe Christians can conquer oppressors by submitting to them while being loyal to God above all. (But that's easy for me to say, sitting here, experiencing relatively little persecution.)

Ironically, I'm probably less sure of God's existence than I was when I wrote the letter I mentioned.

A non-Easter story for Easter

A long time ago, a prophet said:

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me,
  for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted
  and to proclaim that captives will be released
  and prisoners will be freed.
He has sent me to tell those who mourn
  that the time of the Lord’s favor has come."

Several hundred years later, Jesus read this in public and said, "This Scripture has come true today before your very eyes!"

Impotent fundamentalists

I found some interesting thoughts about fundamentalism for those of you that don't like fundamentalism. (And really, who does? Even fundamentalists don't like fundamentalists; they just don't think they are fundamentalists.) Here it is:

Fundamentalism isn't too violent; it isn't violent enough

Sweatshops

For a while, I've been wondering where I could find ordinary, casual clothing that wasn't produced in sweatshops. I can't just look for a "Made in Canada" label anymore because those are so hard to find (not that I did look for those labels when they were easier to find).

Recently, I got an email from Mountain Equipment Co-op saying they'd released their 2007 Accountability Report. I knew they try to get their products from ethical sources, so I decided to learn more by reading Chapter 3: Manufacturing MEC-Brand Products. The report comes across as an honest assessment. There are problems in many of the factories where they get their products, but they're working to improve things. And the Ethical Trading Action Group ranked MEC 2nd out of clothing brands in North America. Not too shabby.

Which company was in first place, you may wonder? Reebok. I was kind of surprised to see that. I expected MEC to have a high ranking because it's a co-op that isn't so profit-focused, but Reebok seemed like a pretty ordinary company with no big efforts to promote its ethical standards. I think I'll be a bit more likely to buy Reebok clothing in the future.

I ended up visiting the website where this ranking came from and I searched for "Reebok". In my brief search, I didn't find the full rankings, but I did see that Nike and The Gap ranked high too. I thought these were some of the worst offenders. Apparently they got decent marks because they are starting to report on problems at their factories and they're making efforts to improve things. I wonder if Reebok is in a similar boat.

Olympics and human rights

Near the start of the Olympics I saw a blog (it was on the Persecuted Church Weblog, but after a quick skim, I can't find the specific post) where the writer said if these Olympics become a train wreck, it might force some serious changes in the Chinese government, and maybe they'd show more respect for human rights. It sounded like he hoped for problems.

But the Beijing Olympics were a resounding success. Right after they ended, I read an Edmonton Journal article, which said, "Many China watchers feared that if the Olympics went badly for China, if terrorism or massive demonstrations grabbed the headlines, the country might climb back into its shell of paranoia and distrust. Successful Games, they argued, would give the leadership confidence to continue and expand the policy of openness it is cautiously embarked upon."

For the sake of everyone oppressed in China, I hope this Journal article was right. And if we look back at history, it seems like democracy and human rights tend to develop best gradually. I certainly don't want to hold back improvements, but it seems like when things change very fast, some of the oppressed become the oppressors, or society gets unstable and violent.

Romeo Dallaire

"You must give them my messages whether they listen or not. But they won't listen, for they are completely rebellious!" --God's words to the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 2:7

Last Sunday, while I was in Calgary, I had the opportunity to hear Romeo Dallaire speak. He led the UN mission in Rwanda during the genocide there. While he didn't say much about Rwanda, he talked about some ways in which conflict has changed, and what Canada can do in it. He thinks that as a "middle power" we need to step up and intervene more in situations like Rwanda and Darfur. He also spoke of the need for countries like ours to be less motivated by self-interest.

While I was thinking about Romeo Dallaire before he spoke, I noticed some similarities between him and the prophets in the Old Testament. He had an important message (many people in Rwanda were being killed and the world needed to do more about it), he was ignored, the results were disastrous, and now we honour him. How long will it take us to learn to listen to these warnings? I suppose the world doesn't always ignore the important warnings we get, but I think we can do better.

Dissent because of Love

I recently read something interesting about some parallels between Vladimir Putin's leadership of Russia and the leadership of Christianity's leaders. You can read it here. After talking about Russia's increasing success and Putin's suppression of opposition, this writer says, "The church, I think, is willing to sacrifice basic human and civil liberties for good and noble results. We prefer success or even just stability to freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is messy and unmanageable." He claims he is a dissenter because he loves the church.

Tonight I watched a movie about another person who was a dissenter because he loved the church. The movie is called Luther. Believe it or not, it's about Martin Luther. He stood up to a corrupt church that was taking away people's freedom and abusing its influence to make money. One thing I didn't realize before is that Luther also stood up to his own supposed followers who used violence to oppose the Catholic church.

This is one of several movies I've seen that makes me wonder how willing I would be to stand up to oppression (religious or not). Would I do it if it meant giving up a good job? If it meant losing friends and dividing my family? If a friend or family member was the oppressor, would I still be willing to oppose them, even if it led to some pretty bad punishment for them? Would I be willing to oppose my church and lose their approval? Would I be willing to die? Or would I keep doing what I'm doing because I think standing up to oppression would never work? Would I wait for someone else to stand up for the oppressed?

Some other movies that prompt thoughts like this, each in their own unique ways, include The Lord of The Rings series, Star Wars Episode 3 (Revenge of the Sith), and The Last King of Scotland. Are there any other movies that get you thinking about things like this? More importantly, what do you think might stop you from standing up to oppression? What might your excuses be?