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CHAPTER 7
A HOME FOR THE REFUGEE
Every Christian is a spiritual refugee,
with citizenship in heaven,
while living on earth.
Living in Latin America, the West Indies and Africa for over four decades has
changed my thinking and my culture. I would no longer consider myself an American
since I left the American culture in 1974 in order to sign up for world citizenship. This
does not say that I have forsaken all cultural links to America. I have some American
baggage. It means, however, that both myself and America have since changed so much
that I feel like a foreigner when I travel to America. One can never go home after being
away from home for so long.
When I first left America for the rest of the world there were some things that were
initially quite challenging to my American culture. One of those things was dealing
with world poverty. The other was dealing with the refugee, a human phenomenon that
was entirely foreign to my American culture. I have since come to better understand
both, though I must confess that there is no fix to either situation.
So you can understand why I once sat stunned in Malawi, listening to my brother,
my fellow Rwandan evangelist who had two weeks before fled in fear with his wife and
three children from Kigali, Rwanda. Soldiers were walking down streets telling jokes
while whacking the heads off everyone they could find. The beheadings turned into a
relentless slaughter of men, women and children. The hundreds of dead in a few days
turned into thousands. The thousands turned into tens of thousands, and then, hundreds
(This series of blogs compose a book that carry the title, “Making Disciples In A Global Community.” )
of thousands. In less than two months over half a million people were butchered in a
killing frenzy that had never happened before in modern times. Some have even
estimated that almost one million died by the end of the slaughter.
Hundreds of thousands of Rwandans ran for their lives. Many fled to the Congo,
Tanzania, Uganda, or any place where they could feel some safety. One teenage boy
walked all the way to South Africa, over 1,500 miles to the south of Rwanda. These
thousands joined the millions who were already refugees in Africa, people who for fear
of death fled for life.
But then there were the refugees who fled because they did not want to take up arms
to kill their fellow brothers. During the Congo wars, many young Congolese showed up
in Cape Town. These were young men who had fled the war because they did not want
to be forced into the conflict of the war. Most of these were religious people who, upon
their arrival, started various churches throughout the city of Cape Town and other cities
of South Africa. But they came into an environment of struggle. These, as all refugees,
fled for survival.
For the refugee home often becomes a tree, a tent, or a simple gathering of tree
limbs that have been shuffled together in a makeshift manner to block either searing heat
or relentless rain from a baby’s head. A mother shudders in the coolness of an African
night, cuddling a small child who shivers uncontrollably. Words of comfort seem to
bring little relief to those who have fled from their homes and for their lives into an
unknown country that is not their home. These are refugees. They are the misery of
situations beyond their control, and too often, beyond their understanding.
Africa is a continent of forced homelessness. It has been a continent of political
struggle that is no different from Bosnia or Afghanistan or Cambodia. The refugee still
suffers the same. Families are torn apart. Fathers killed. Mothers raped. Children left
orphans. Scraps of families show up across some border in a waste land that is
unprepared for their arrival, and often resents their presence. Food is scare. Hunger is a
relentless pain that reminds one that fate has dealt a terrible blow to the human spirit.
Warlords and power hungry rulers consider the refugee the price to pay in order to
sit somewhere in a palace. The refugee is too often the result of the greedy who are
struggling to control gold and diamond mines and oil fields. The unmerciful pompous
princes involved in power struggles of this present time will most certainly eternally pay
for the homelessness of millions of souls they have brought on humanity.
A refugee is who he is, not because he did something wrong, but because he is in a
situation that has gone terribly wrong. He or she usually does not understand the
endless chess games of the political world or the thirst for power of greedy warlords. A
father or mother has simply heard shots and bombs in a distance, grabbed what could be
carried on the backs of every family member, and fled. They are unwillingly homeless.
Refugees have been forgotten by those who would rule over them.
A movie was once produced entitled Blood Diamond. It was a true representation of
the problem with the riches of diamonds in some African countries. Another movie
about African civil war was also produced that was entitled, Lord of War. It was also an
accurate depiction of the diamond/civial war curse of Africa. Both movies had their
setting in the the Liberian/Sierre Leone conflicts of the 90s. Diamonds became the
monetary units that supported the warlords. Forced laborers mined the diamonds, and
the diamonds bought the guns that killed hundreds of thousand of people. Little did a
young bride-to-be in America or Europe know that when her finger was fitted with a
beautiful diamond in order to build a family with a proposing husband that she with the
purchase of that diamond may have destroyed a family in some world she did not know
existed. So many “conflict diamonds” were sold throughout the world in 90s that no
one really knows how many refugees were made by the black market selling of
diamonds to buy guns.
Wars produce wearied refugee souls who flock together in camps that are infested
with disease and dysentery. Host countries often struggle to find locations in their own
crowded lands for these often unwanted guests. Scorned by the locals, the refugee has a
meager existence of living on token rations from foreign governments. Praise God for
humanitarian governments who spill over their surpluses for these who have not
willingly chosen this lot in life. Thank God for churches whose hearts bleed for those
who are naked, and hungry, and destitute. Possibly, the refugee exists in order for God
to test our Christianity. God bless America for her humanitarian nature and care for the
world. If a nation could be saved for her works, surely America is at the top of the list.
A Christian friend ignorantly, but sincerely, questioned, “Why don’t they get jobs.”
There are no classified ads circulated in refugee camps. There is nothing to do. No
fields to tend. No cattle to feed. Nothing. Refugees arrive disillusioned, starved and
destitute. Their arrival at camps is usually a last chance at life. If no food can be found,
then that chance is lost. One simply lies down and dies.
While the haves heap food upon themselves in an environment of tremendous
prosperity, would to God that they remembered the refugee. We often telecommunicatively
witness the plight of the refugee via CNN or BBC. However, it is hard to
feel the suffering of humanity through a television screen or radio speaker. While
sumptuously eating dinner, we sit and watch the misery of others. While watching the
starving we say, “Pass the potatoes.” We moan a word or two of disgust, and then pass
on to the next news event. All the while on the other end of the camera a mother, or a
father, or a helpless child dies before the end of the evening news. Recent figures
manifest that 75,000 people die each day because of malnutrition causes. During the
Rwanda crisis, one thousand died each day in the Goma refugee camp alone.
People die en masse in famine areas throughout the world. Agony thrives in the
bodies of those who unfortunately live in famine stricken refugee camps. It is a
wretched death. Your muscles wither away because there is no more fat off which your
body can feed. Flies relentlessly torment your mouth and eyes. You become so weak
that walking becomes impossible. You simply stare into oblivion and waste away. Your
stomach aches. Your flesh becomes as leather. Your eyes become sunken and glassy.
You then die.
Famine is a merciless attack against the human being. Drought inflicts endless
misery. Place the refugee in a famine situation and we have the most deplorable
situation that life can deal to the human being. What is even more cruel about this is the
fact that there is more than enough food in the world to prevent this. Our challenge is to
first sensitize the haves to the tremendous need for food throughout the world.
Secondly, we face the problem of getting the surplus of the haves to the hungry mouths
of the have nots. This can be done. There are great and noble efforts and people out
there who are doing something. We must fully support their efforts. We must not
become dull of hearing their pleas for our help.
When one lives in the middle of Africa it is difficult to communicate needs to the
rest of the world. But keep in mind that twice as many people died from starvation and
civil war in Angola in the six months previous to April 1993 than in the war of Bosnia.
But Bosnia was on TV news every day. People cried out. Governments were forced to
do something. But no one was listening to the struggles of Angola. Is this racism in the
press? As long as it happens in Africa I suppose it is no real problem. Nobody seems to
know or care. TIA.
When refugees started coming over the border into Namibia from the Angolan war,
I said to Martha that we must do something. The next day we received a fax that a
church in Columbia, South Carolina had committed $1,000 to famine relief. God
answers prayers. People do care. We simply need to be challenged to do something.
Adrian Blow, Kurt Platt from Swaziland, and I once made a 4,500 mile round trip up
to the Namibia/Angola border to work with refugees out of Angola. During this trip I
was touched by the reality of struggle and the plight of the refugee. Refugees had fled
into Namibia to escape the harassment of soldiers who sought to raid and rape. We
prayed for peace in Angola. If peace did not come, then tragedy would intensify. Peace
has since come.
Over one million Mozambique refugees lingered in Malawi in makeshift huts during
that twenty-year civil war. A quarter of a million Mozambique refugees were in South
Africa. Thousands were in refugee camps from Somalia and other nations. In every
camp and in every situation, the refugee camp is the same. Flies, dysentery, coughing
children, malaria and a host of other human sufferings are common experiences of
existence. Sickness and death are daily rituals to which inhabitants become desensitized
because of their commonality.
We blame not God for allowing such human suffering to come upon humanity. We
look to ourselves. Our thirst for power, our selfishness, our indifference and political
games have caused us to lose contact with humanity. Yes, and even our desire for that
diamond. The individual is lost in a global arena where national boundaries were drawn
from commandos’ quarters. The plight of the poor is of no concern to those who lavish
themselves with wine in diplomatic conclaves that are thousands of miles from the
suffering of a refugee child who is about to breathe his last breath.
“God, please have mercy on us because of our lack of sensitively to the plight of the
refugee. Forgive us for our greed which often causes war to protect our ‘interest’ in some far
off Third World country whose name we cannot recall.”
We live in a crazy world. It is a mixed up world of rich and poor, power and
poverty. For example, during the years of the Angolan civil war, both sides were
indirectly supported by what the rest of the world consumed. The government
maintained the rich oil fields, from which they sold oil to the rest of the world in order
to buy their guns. UNITA, the opposition force, gained control of the diamond mines.
They sold diamonds to the rest of the world in order to buy their guns. This is a
wretched scenario, isn’t it? We consume the goods that supports some senseless war.
In the struggle between forces, the refugee is born. The refugee camp is built. The
refugee mother sits idly on a rock under the few limbs or boards she has thrown together
for her children, wondering what it is all about. She knows nothing of the use of
uranium. She wears no diamonds on her finger. She can never use copper or platinum.
She has never heard of titanium. Many are as the Malawian preacher who asked me a
question during a seminar session, “Brother Dickson, What is gold?” This innocent
African resident, as others, often pays the great price for all these most precious things
over which the industrial world goes to war.
The refugee is the result of sin at work in the world. Satan does his best work in
governments that cause misery. Political treaties bring temporary peace. But the gospel
is the only hope for a world that has gone astray with the direction of Satan. The gospel
must go into all the world, not only to save man from eternal destruction, but also to
save him from himself. The Christian is truly the salt of the earth; he is the only hope
for a world going wrong with sin.
We would remember the words of Jesus.
Then the King will say to those on His right hand, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you
gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I
was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came
to Me.” Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, “Lord, when did we see You hungry
and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You
in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?”
And the King will answer and say to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to
one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.
So what is the opportunity of the refugee for world evangelism? We must always
keep in mind that God always turns Satan against himself. When Satan causes social
chaos, God goes to work. It is an axiomatic truth of the spiritual warfare between good
and evil that started with the beginning of time.
I have already mentioned how the Congolese refugees have blessed South Africa.
These were those young men who did not want to take up a gun and kill their fellow
Congolese. When they fled to South Africa they started churches throughout the
country.
When a civil war is over, refugees must return to their country of origin. They lose
their UN refugee status, and thus must return home. This reverse migration presents a
great opportunity for evangelism. I was once in Addis Abba, Ethiopia where Behailu
Abebe, an Ehiopian preacher, was working with Sudanese refugees. At the time we
knew of no churches in Sudan. After baptizing several of these refugees, we concluded
that the church was established in Sudan though the baptisms took place in Ethiopia. I
am sure this is what took place in Jerusalem in Acts 2 after many of the 3,000, who were
baptized on the day of Pentecost and the following weeks, returned to their homes of
origin. Refugee camps are places to evangelize in hope of civil wars that will eventually
come to an end.
Northern Mozambique was evangelized during the civil war there when over two
million Mozambiqueans who were living in southern Malawi were evangelized by the
Malawian church. The Malawian church preached the gospel among the refugees, and
when the refugees returned home, they established the church in northern Mozambique.
God uses the work of Satan to accomplish His mission to populate heaven. The plight
of the refugee can thus be turned into a plan to evangelize a nation.
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