We are mourning the barbaric mass murder of our Ethiopian brothers in Libya, while still nursing our wounds following the xenophobic murders of our fellow Ethiopians in South Africa.
Dr. Girma Bekele asks:
What is our role as responsible Ethiopian Christian citizens?
When evil suddenly shows its face in a way that shatters our lives, it generates a tough question: “Where is God?” Habakkuk echoed the same:“How long, Lord, must I call for help but you do not listen?” (1:2) and was cornered into a conclusion that God seemed silent, indifferent to the victims of iniquity and wickedness. And of course, Christ’s agonizing cry on the cross echoing David who, in great anguish, prayed: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?” (Ps. 22:1).
We are mourning the barbaric mass slaughter of our own brothers by the evil ISIS, while still nursing our wounds following the murders of our fellow Ethiopians by South African thugs leading a violent reaction against migrants looking for work in their country. This is racial brutality coming full circle: this time Black South Africans, who once were themselves victims of apartheid and fought for freedom, are becoming oppressors. This is a disgrace to the dreams of great leaders such as Nelson Mandela. This sad cycle attests again that liberation without transformation only reproduces tyranny.
Nonetheless, our ultimate hope as believers is that God’s sovereignty rules! Nothing is hidden from the justice of God. God is greater than ISIS and all perpetrators down through history who shed innocent blood from the blood of Abel – the very first victim of hatred and unwarranted violence—to our own brothers whose blood was shed on Libyan shores, in the streets of South Africa or who were killed by Bedouin gangs in the Sinai desert as they searched for a better life.
What is our role as responsible Ethiopian Christian citizens?, We cannot pretend to remain unaffected, for our earthly destiny is inseparably linked with the destiny of our nation. Every socio-political and economic decision made in Ethiopia affects us as well. As believers we are made up of peoples from diverse ethnic backgrounds, redeemed and reconciled with God and with each other. Our true vocation includes being the Missional Alternative Community that can powerfully serve the cause of national reconciliation and transformation. Members of the three churches – the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC), the Evangelicals and the Catholics—constitute at least 60% of the population (assuming the accuracy of current statistics that place each at 40-45%, 18-21% and 0.7-1%, respectively). One can only imagine the extent of their combined impact on the nation of Ethiopia if churches actively move towards mutual confession, reconciliation, and renewal.
In many ways, the massive exodus from the country by any means and at any cost speaks strongly about the need to struggle against the crisis of poverty. Ethiopia is one of the poorest nations in the world, to the extent that famine and poverty are synonymous with being Ethiopian. Internally, dictatorial and oppressive regimes that have ruined the socio-economic structure of the country, the aftermath of civil war with Eritrea, repeated famine and drought—all these define the profile of Ethiopian poverty. In the global context, for most Ethiopians, globalization echoes a repetitive story of injustice, pain, neglect, dictatorship and poverty. Global inequality has divided today’s world into two extremes of socio-economic and political power in which the poor have become poorer and the rich richer. The majority of Ethiopians cannot be called global citizens. They do not count in the economic and political equation of a globalizing world. While the world is certainly getting “smaller” and more radically inter-connected, the expectations of millions of Ethiopians for life’s basic needs (such as access to clean water, electricity, health care and education) are yet to be realized. The plight of the poor, the great majority, is and must be at the heart of national discourse.
Ethiopian Christianity has to address a two-edged challenge, which in this message I can describe only briefly. The first and the gravest problem is acute poverty among its people. The second challenge of this time is the cloud of lingering tension between ethnic distinctiveness and national unity. In the latter case, there is a need to live in creative tension—towards a progressive, more viable balance between a unifying federalism and legitimate regional particularism (currently based on traditional ethno-linguistic local majorities).
In the immediate context of the three recent episodes of violence—in the Sinai desert, in South Africa and just the other day in Libya—it is crucial that we should pray, and with Christian hope, we should promote and encourage a national discourse as responsible Christian citizens. So what are at stake that requires our prayers and work for national peace, justice and prosperity? Under the above stated two major challenges, there are five issues that beg national Christian dialogue.
First—the destiny of millions of poor –the great majority in the nation. The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), published by Oxford University (Jan. 2015), ranks our county as the second poorest country in the world just ahead of Niger. 87.3% of Ethiopians are classified as poor in all dimensions this report analyzes. I would want to add that all the recent victims of murderous violence are among the many thousands who have risked their lives in search of a better life.
Poverty is our worst enemy and successive national governing regimes, past and present, have failed to effectively address it. Poverty cannot erase the God-given likeness of each human being created in God’s own image. It is the realization of this image of God that we all carry that provides a platform for our effort to improve our own and fellow citizen’s conditions of life, basic necessities, and an enduring human dignity for all.
Imagine the possibilities if the Christian majority in our county were united around a common goal of betterment of the life of the poor! The effort in itself would heal mutual alienation, and would bring minds and hearts together in a sustained effort to work out intelligent and practical solutions to the problems of hunger, lack of health care, inadequate education, and unemployment.
“The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.” (Ez. 34:4)
LORD, have mercy!
Second—Mission that embraces a God-given ethnic innocence. The growing mutually exclusive ethnic self-interest is worrisome, as this consciousness includes embedded feelings of mistrust, hostility, revenge, paternalism, self-protection and mutual exclusivism. We need to be alert to the damage being caused to the unity of the church as the unique body of Christ by excessive ethnic self-consciousness. There is a pressing need to rise above walls of ethnicity can be seen in the current compromise between centralism and regional particularism. The church is called to be a healer. The people of faith are called to build bridges and rise above human-made divisions within society. We need to ask what it means to be the people of God in the age of polarization and extremism.
The Ethiopian Church is being challenged to take its privileged position as the majority of the population of Ethiopia, and use it as an instrument of healing. True renewal would redefine Christian witnessing as a call to live above all social divides, including ethnic division, in allegiance to the kingdom of God. All human boundaries have been removed because of the cross—those between Jews and Gentiles, slaves and masters, women and men, parents and children. The Christian is invited into a new identity as one who has died to the old ways and has risen to a new life in allegiance to the values of the kingdom of God. Because of the cross, the mutual solidarity within this community is no longer defined by the loyalties and prejudices of kinship, race, people, language, culture, class, political convictions, and religious affinities. It is defined by a new identity in Christ that transcends all these differences.
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)
LORD, have mercy!
Third—our evangelistic mission to the Muslims. Ethiopia is a mosaic nation and it must resist extremism, whether of a religious or of an ethnic variety. There are two extreme deadly polarities that we need to resist. The first deadly mistake would be to view our fellow Ethiopian citizens who are adherents of Islam as if they were, automatically, supporters of ISIS. Historically, Islam and Christianity have co-existed in Ethiopia in relative peace. The second and equally deadly danger is that the extremist theological convictions and barbaric acts of ISIS will find a fertile soil among some fringe groups within Ethiopian Muslims. We need to pray for divine protection from both dangers. We need to pray and seek for a new missionary paradigm that is faithful simultaneously to the centrality and exclusivity of Jesus Christ and to God’s respectful love for the world, including our millions of Muslim Ethiopian citizens. Jesus Christ is uniquely the Word of God whose words are eternal life, and the words of any Christian community can be verified as truth according to whether they conform to and agree with the one Word. All human beings have a thirst for God because they are created for a relationship with God. We need to be committed to the gospel and to be vehicles of God’s unsearchable wisdom to our fellow Ethiopians who are Muslims. There are so many common grounds such as the sanctity of human life, the fight against poverty, family and marriage that we can collaborate to work together for a peaceful Ethiopia. Common grounds can foster a respectful religious dialogue and witness. We must look at them with love through the eyes of Christ. We need to walk in the light of ultimate love expressed on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Lk. 23:34)
“Cry out with joy to God, all the earth! O sing to the glory of his name, and render him glorious praise!” (Psalm 65: 1-2 )
LORD, have mercy!
Fourth—missional integrity. Christ said: “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out…” (Matt. 5:13). The Ethiopian church is called to live in a rooted prophetic distinctiveness as the visible sign of God’s Kingdom. In many ways, the spiritual, ethical and moral crises of our time, both among the Evangelicals and the EOTC, are reflections of the Ethiopian church losing its prophetic significance: saltiness! Salt has so many virtues: it gives taste, preserves, functions as antiseptic and has many more valuable uses. Similarly, only in its becoming the church of the risen Lord will the church continue to be a permanent challenge to the world and its values. How can it be healing to the world when the church itself is sick with the same illness? Anyone who has genuinely encountered Jesus in heartfelt faith will never remain the same and will never see the world with the same eyes. The contemporary Ethiopian Christian challenge is not so much the “speaking”, but the “living”: a life worthy of God’s glory that the world cannot resist. As such, the church, in its true self, points the world, under darkness, to the righteousness and irresistible glory of Christ.
“We live and move by your very breath; come and be the LIFE from within us for we can do NOTHING without you!”
LORD, have mercy!
Fifth—leadership. In a country that is deeply divided, the powerful and the rich harden their hearts against the needs and rights of the poor. Ethiopia needs transformed and transforming visionary and servant leaders, who do not fear to work and strive, not for their own self-satisfaction or for the prestige of their families, but for the good of all! A house of divided against itself cannot work for national unity and the prosperity of common good. The credibility any type of federalism hinges upon the maintenance of a sustainable, meaningful and transparent constitutional distribution of power between the centre and the regional states, with a preferential option for the poor and marginalized people groups. It must also include the proportional distribution of power between the federal legislative and executive levels through a democratic process that allows meaningful dialogue for the mutual and common benefit of all.
At the ecclesiastical level, it is scandalous churches in Ethiopia are so deeply divided. Leadership conflicts within both the EOTC and the Evangelicals (with varying degrees) are mixed with excessive ethnic self-promotion. One’s theological or socio-economic and political views, as well as one’s actions or inactions are seen through the prism of ethnicity, regardless of one’s intention. Within the evangelical body (both in Ethiopia and in Diaspora), churches split easily. All these are making the church of Ethiopia just another “broken social structure”—a failed status-quo.
“My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them… surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep.” (Ex. 34:5-8)
LORD, have mercy!
In the interim, a non-political body constituted from national religious leaders, human rights groups and agencies of the federal government must be formed without delay to plan a rescue mission of Ethiopian citizens at risk in Libya, Yemen and other Arab countries by working with agencies of the international community such as UNHCR and Amnesty International. In addition, we need to set a support system to help the voluntarily returning Ethiopians resettle and reintegrate into their communities.
We need to pray and do our part for national visitation: healing for our fractured spirituality, national unity, politics and economy- the very reasons why so many risk their own lives as migrants and refugees. We can do justice and honour the blood of those who have been killed, if we truly live as a nation where God’s righteousness reigns! That means an intentional and purposeful national effort for a more just, peaceful and prosperous Ethiopia.
Our hope is in the Lord, the unfailing Good Shepherd, who has said: “Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.” (Ez. 34:11) Ultimately, our nation’s true peace and prosperity has to come from the Lord of blessings Himself. We need to be a PRAYING NATION. We must stand unified in prayer as a resilient Christian nation of nearly 1700 years heritage that withstood various oppositions from within and without. Let us reach out to one another, think well of one another and sing: “Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.” We should rise above the terror ISIS is causing. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church for the Risen Christ, who is seated at the right hand of the Father, is always with us each and every day until the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:20). Let the light of Christ which darkness cannot overcome shine in and through us to the nations around us and to the world. Let’s unite in prayer for more grace, wisdom and favour as Ethiopian church leaders help the nation come out of mourning and re-direct our focus on the supremacy of Christ and His Kingdom over all powers!
With much love and respect.
