They are
now saying that over 96,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war.
That is as many people as will attend a sold out Ohio State football game after
a new expansion they are working on. Imagine an entire stadium of all of those
people gone. I had high hopes that at the recent G8 summit that they richest
countries of the world would do something to stop this terrible conflict. It
seems that they have come up with nothing.
Where
should we stand on this issue, (or all other violent conflicts) as Christians?
Of course, its complicated. I have spoken to Christians who take a
noninvolvement approach. “If they want to blow each other up, that’s up to
them.” They do not see it as worthwhile to use our time and energy to care for
these foreignors, nor advocate the use of our countries’ tax dollars and
government resources to do something to bring peace. But this is not an option.
We must do what we can to love our neighbor even if they live on the other side
of the world. These are people Christ bled and died for. We are our brothers’
keepers.
Many look
back at Christian’s lack of response to the Rwandan genocide as a failure of
the church. Now the fact that many who claimed to be followers of Christ
participate in the atrocities is a separate issue, but our lack of involvement
in stopping the genocide needs to be considered. In a matter of a few
months it is estimated over a million lives were taken in the genocide. Nearly
half were killed in the first couple weeks. What really could we have done? Of
course we could, and should have, prayed. But our prayers should have also lead to
personal action. It is believed that a deployment of troops to protect churches and other sanctuaries could have save at least a tenth of the innocent. Surely we could
have done something.
Now, we
aren’t seeing the amount of deaths in Syria as we did in Rwanda but the death
toll is rising. I appreciate how the Lutheran Church has responded and I think
the rest of us should stand with them. They have communicated their desire to
the president that our country intervene and they have also worked hard to care
for refugees in Jordan. I think we would be wise to support them or others who are trying
to make a difference. I do not want to be sitting around talking to other Christians in twenty years saying we should have done something.
