The Rule of Evil, the Rule of Good
In 1986, my younger sister Sarah went to Liberia, to a little town in
the bush, 300 miles from the capital city, Monrovia. She went
there to work in an old Episcopalian mission, established nearly 100
years before by the Holy Cross brothers. In the days when freed
slaves from America were moving to Liberia to settle, the Order of the
Holy Cross decided to support that idealistic movement by setting up a
mission and a school in the little town of Bolahun. The children
of the Americo-Liberians were educated in the school, and they went on
to become the leaders of that emerging nation. This order of
things persisted for almost 100 years until it began to break
down. The mission was left with one aging priest. The
school was taken over by the local village. Amidst accusations of
corruption and elitism, the Americo-Liberians found the government
moving out of their hands and into the hands of the military. No
longer did the children of the president, vice-president, supreme court
justices, and other ruling elite come to Bolahun for their education
and preparation for university.
In 1986, when Sarah went to work in Bolahun, she found a sleepy, little
African village and a run-down church building, with a library of less
than 100 volumes, and a school that had students some days, but not on
others, because the local families didn’t really see the point of
sending their children to school at all, much less on a day when they
needed their labor at home.
But the year after she left, 1988, the situation broke down into
complete chaos - no, worse than chaos, things entered the realm of
hell. In 1988, oil baron Charles Taylor sent his armed forces
throughout the country to try to seize power on his behalf, while
another man, Prince somebody, sent an army to try to seize power on his
behalf, and the Liberian army tried to fend off armed rebellion on two
fronts. Civilians were killed indiscriminately in a civil war
that quickly degenerated (as most of the African civil wars during the
past few decades have) into armed groups of men killing for food,
money, weapons and drugs to keep them going for a few more days or
months.
In 1988, Sarah received a letter from someone who had lived in Bolahun
telling her what had happened. One day, a group of armed men who
said they were fighting for Charles Taylor appeared in the village and
brought all the villagers into the center of the village at gun
point. They had been lead into Bolahun by a boy, the son of the
school mistress, and he announced to all of them that they were now
under the authority of Charles Taylor and they must give these men all
the food and money they had to help their fight. These men would
also be staying in their houses and occupying the village.
His mother came forward to ask her son why he had lead these armed men into their peaceful village.
The boy spat in her face.
What do we call the force that compels a child to act in such a way? ?????? (evil)
That was it – the end of order, the beginning of the indiscriminate rule of violence.
That night, under cover of darkness, all of the villagers who could,
left. They knew that if they stayed, they were not long for this
world. And yes, the armed men destroyed the village, burned all
the buildings, took everything they wanted, and moved on to do the same
in the next village.
And so many of these armed ones were not men at all, but just boys like the one who lead them into Bolahun.
I’ve heard off and on about these boy-soldiers for years now, and
wondered how on earth they could ever be restored to life in a civil
society after what they must have seen and done in the midst of these
horrible wars.
A couple of weeks ago, I saw the memoir of one of these boy soldiers,
Ishmael Beah of Sierra Leone, in the library. I picked it up and
began to read.
I don’t want to go through the hell of all that happened, and all that
he did in the midst of the civil war. It is gut wrenching.
And we see way too much of such hellish violence in movies.
Instead, what amazed me was the rehabilitation process. Ishmael
Beah, by the sheer grace of God, found himself in the Benin Home for
Boys, a place dedicated to rehabilitating boy soldiers. He
described himself as possessed by anger and hate during that
time. He looked at every teacher and worker in that school – all
authority figures – with anger and hate. He did not want to be
told to do anything, not taught math or reading, not taught how to
behave in civil society – since when were these civilians ordering him
around. And the other boys had the same terrible habit – they
hated all civilian authorities and wanted to keep the power they had
learned in the war, the power of taking whatever they wanted by
violence.
What a challenge for a teacher! What a challenge for a houseparent!
What a challenge for anyone working in that school from the janitor to
the headmaster.
Ishmael wrote that the workers in the school were regularly tormented
by the boys, himself included. They would act out their hatred by
attacking the workers in gangs, stabbing them with sharpened teachers,
tying them to trees. And these people would respond again and
again with warm smiles, and strong loving words, saying: “You are not
responsible for what happened in the war. You were only
children. You are still only boys.”
What do we call the force that compels ordinary people to display such
a strong commitment to selfless, sacrificial love even when they are
under attack? ???????? (good)
Jesus speaks of the times when hell shows its face – when wars ravage
the land, when brother betrays brother, when no one is safe, when
everyone is betraying everyone else, and violence and hatred
rule. And he tells his disciples this “This will give you an
opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your
defense in advance; for I will give you words and wisdom that none of
your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” And so
when evil rules, it is time to testify to the good of God. And
God will guide us, if we hold fast to his truth.
The boys could not contradict the love the teachers gave them.
They could try to fight it with hatred, with violence, but they could
not make the teachers hate them back. They could not make the
teachers fight with them. They could not start a civil war in
that school. The staff responded with strong, clear, loving
force, stating the truth, stopping the violence and never retaliating.
The boys ganged up on a janitor in the building and beat him so
severely he had to be taken to the hospital. Five days later, he
returned from the hospital limping, his head still bandaged, and when
he saw them, he smiled lovingly and said, “You are not responsible for
what happened in the war. You were only children. You are
still only boys.”
As he described it, with the evil that still possessed him, Ishmael
hated that man when he expressed such strong, sacrificial love.
But in the end, it was the perseverance of the workers in the Benin
Home for Boys that saved him, that and the love of God that came
through a few others in amazing and self-sacrificing ways. He
learned that the law of the jungle is not the only law. There is
a higher law, and one that is ultimately much more powerful. The
law of God builds its temple in our hearts, even when the temple built
by human hands is destroyed, even in the midst of terrible wars; it
still survives and seeks to save the lost. It is the love and
truth of God that we see it shining in the face of Christ, even after
the temple of his body was destroyed by the crucifixion. It is
the resurrection, and its power transcends even death.
Amen.
The Rev. Edie Bird
25th Sunday after Pentecost
18 November 2007
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