Tumultous Times
I paid my first visit to North Africa a year ago. Almost everything surprised me about the visit. It was much cooler than I was expecting and for much of the time I needed to wear a jumper. It was also amazingly unlike the Africa that I have come to know and love – but that was sub-Saharan Africa. I concluded that North Africa was much more similar to the Middle East than to the rest of Africa.
I was well aware of the oppressive nature of most of the governments in the region, and assumed, like everyone else, that that was just one of those things. We had no choice but to accept that that’s the way things are in that particular region. Stories have filtered through for years about human rights violations and of the oppression of the Christians in the region. To use an expression that has been much used recently, we learnt to hold our nose and get on with life.
But now everything has changed. The protests that started on the streets of Tunis and which spread dramatically to Cairo have now, sensationally, even reached Libya, where significant areas have fallen into the hands of those opposed to the government. To oppose the rule of Colonel Gaddafi must have taken nothing less than raw courage. I recognize that it is very dangerous writing about these things because events are moving so fast that my comments are likely to be out of date by lunch time! But we do need to reflect on these tumultuous times because, however things develop, they will change the shape of our world.
We would do well to reflect on whether we have accepted the existing order too easily. Should we have spoken out sooner? Should we have been protesting on the streets in support of the opposition parties in these troubled lands? Should we have prayed more and studied more about these countries? I am honestly not wanting to send you off on a frenzied guilt trip. I simply feel that these are questions that shouldn’t be ignored.
But that’s the past. What should we be doing now? We can and must pray and I trust that we are remembering these nations in our prayers. We must pray that they will find the path to peace and justice, and that people will be given the dignity of being able to express their views freely and safely. We must also remember our Christian brothers and sisters. They are few in number and so are desperately dependent upon our love and support.
It’s always tempting to avoid these huge issues, because they are so far beyond our own personal experiences. We may well feel that we have enough of our own problems to cope with! But as Christians our responsibilities are unavoidably global. This would be oppressive were it not for the fact that we are part of an incredible Christian family that is also global. In early March I will spend a week in Washington DC attending meetings of the Baptist World Alliance. Through the BWA we are linked with tens of millions of other Baptists all over the world. As Baptists we are just a small slice of the global Christian church but through our links we have the privilege of being able to play our part. Please pray that, as we work with other Christian brothers and sisters, we will be able to make an appropriate and Christ-like response in these tumultuous times.
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