Bishop Festo Kivengere founded African Team Ministries in 1984, and wrote columns for its Newsletters, and also for those of African Enterprise. With the permission of Keith Jesson, ATM's president, I present this column from June 1979 (Vol. XVI, No. 6).
In Uganda today, hearts have been poisoned, lives are bitter. People are thinking of revenge. "If I can kill the man who killed my Dad, maybe I will feel better." What can we say to this human feeling?
I met a churchman who said to me, "You don't understand, bishop. My own brother was taken and tortured to death by Amin's men. What do you think I will do to them if I get the chance?"
What remedy do we have for those gaping, bleeding wounds in the hearts of men and women? How do you release this dear man from the grip of destruction that has invaded his personality? How release his children? We have a tremendous job in Uganda today. There are wounds and poison for which there is only one antidote.
It is simple, but very profound, deeper than any human misery. St. Paul told us, he who used to be Saul of Tarsus, a bigot and a destroyer, captured by revenge and lust for killing, together with a cold religiosity, says,
"When anyone (and anyone means anyone, with no qualifications) is joined to Christ, or is in Christ, he becomes a new person altogether." Read 2 Corinthians 5:17-19. "Old things are gone!"
What old things are gone? Old ways of looking at life, old reactions, old methods of retaliation: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The old values are reevaluated. Everything has undergone a kind of transformation.
The old is gone and the new has come for anyone who is in Christ. All this is God's own doing in you, not your doing or mine. Man has no ability to produce the new because man is as old as his sins!
Paul must have been a bit excited at the thought of it. God, through Christ, had changed him from an enemy into His friend, and the friend of those he used to hate. How do you go about changing your enemy into a friend without destroying him? This is the task God has given us, there is no doubt about it.
Our message is that God is in the process of making all men and women His friends, regardless of who they are, and He does not keep any account of their sins!
God in Christ, in His incredible love, bled to death for those sins. Now He stands with His arms of eternal love wide open, saying humbly and beautifully to His enemies, "You are now my friends. Come to Me!"
He knows the shattered communities in Uganda, the minds that are deeply poisoned because of murder and massacres. He is aware of the half million orphans with no father to turn to, and the bitterness in the lonely mothers. He knows those with twisted sould because their whole lives have become "Plunder, loot and kill!"
The only antidote is Calvary Love, bleeding in nakedness, sweat and tears. It alone transforms bitter enemies into friends, neutralizes hate's poison and introduces improbable love into society. Pray that we be filled with this love as we declare it.
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