Carrying the Cross

Today I read a post about how evil people - whose intent is entirely unclear - are accusing African children of witchcraft.  Bad things, including horrifying abuse and even death visit these young "witches" once the charge has been made.  The title of the article proclaims: "African Children Denounced As 'Witches' By Christian Pastors." 

First let me make this statement.  What's happening to these children is wrong.  It's evil.  Everyone involved in participating in this modern-day witchhunt is wrong.  The key to stopping it is - clearly - education and relieving poverty (read the article to understand the connection to poverty).  I will personally find a way to contribute to that effort even though the article gives no indication or information about contributing to relief financially or otherwise. 

I find it irritating and irresponsible that this issue, though, is labeled a Christian issue.  The fourth paragraph of the article states, "pastors were involved in half of the 200 cases of 'witch children' reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files."  The information in the article continues to refute its own title with phrases like:  "renegade local branches of international francises..."  Christian problem?  Of course it is!  It's a Chrisitan problem because we are the body of Christ and what happens to the least of us, happens to all of us.  That is clearly not what the article is asserting though.  This author asserts this is happening because some of the people involved proclaim to be Christian.

Eh?  What about the other half of the 200 cases?  What about the 15,000 other children that have been accused?  What about the fact that the government has recently made it illegal to declare children witches?  Doesn't that suggest this is a culteral issue, rather than a Christian issue?  Why does the article not mention all the good those same churches are doing in Africa, building wells so people can have clean water, providing education for children, ministering to the poor and suffering?  Purchasing cows for families so they have an ongoing source of nutrition as our youngest parishioners have been doing for several years.

Evil - no matter where we find it - is evil.  Perpetrated against children and other vulnerable people like the elderly and handicapped, it somehow becomes more vile and horrifying. 

I recall a debate a few years ago about how telling the story of the Passion of Christ supposedly perpetrated hatred against Jews.  I never read it that way.  I read some bad people were doing evil things and because they were hateful, Christ died in a horrific manner.

I refuse to participate in the brush-stroke mentality that paints entire races and genders and groups and affiliations in a certain light because one or more segments of the population act a certain way. 

I choose to see people as individuals who make their own choices because God gave us that ability. 

I choose to believe most people seek goodness and kindness and light, and want to share it with others, because we cannot help wanting to share the Good News that is Christ's message of love. 

I choose to trample injustice when I encounter it no matter what kind of personal persecution it earns me because we are called to do so in our baptismal and confirmatory promises. 

Christianity, asserts Flannery O'Conner time and again, is not for the faint of heart, but for those who will take up the cross and follow Christ through the deserts and thronging Temple, all the way up the road to Calvary.

And that, folks, is how to be a Christian: take up the cross and walk the persecuted path while doing the very best we can to ease suffering and pain and hatred when we find it.