Sin on Horseback

Last week, the United Nations passed the UN Security Council Resolution 1769, aauthorizing the deployment of thousands of peacekeepers to the war-torn region of Darfur, Sudan.

But will it really be over soon?
In May of 2006, the Darfur peace agreement was signed by the majority of those involved in the Darfur genocide which was supposed to bring peace to Sudan.
Now over a year later, the genocide continues.

Over the next six months, according to the United Nations, nearly 26,000 troops are to be deployed to Sudan.

This has brought little comfort to those that are being raped and murdered in Darfur, however. This isn't the first they have been promised peace and safety.

Just to give you an idea of how bad the situation in Darfur is, here's an event that took place in December 2006 in the Darfuri capital of El Fasher. This account is from African Union forces that were in the area when the incident occured:

"We were helping a woman put together a small shelter for her and her two sons. Suddenly, we heard vehicle's approaching and saw many of the Janjaweed militiamen riding towards us.
We quickly called for help. More of our soldiers showed up. They brought word that paramilitary forces that appeared to be Sudanese government soldiers and Janjaweed militiamen had surronded the large camp just outside of the city we were guarding, filled mostly with women and children.

We were outnumbered and to underequiped to confront them, but we stayed anyways, thinking that we being peacekeepers would save us from being killed.

A small group from the paramilitary force drove up in a Sudanese army vehicle and told us to go to our barracks, or we would be killed along with everyone in the village. One of our soldiers told the man we weren't leaving. He was promptly shot in the chest.

Needless to say, we went to our barracks, taking our wounded man with us.
By God's grace, the Janjaweed and Sudanese military left instead of raiding the village that was home to thousands of women and children. We guess they just want us to know that they are in charge. Now the Darfuri civilians don't trust us to protect them."


It's doesn't even take common sense to see that the UN peacekeepers need to be deployed now to replace the African Union peacekeepers.
400,000 are already dead, more have been raped and beaten and the world goes on as if nothing is happening.

It makes me sick.

I've been told more than once that I have bashed the American Christian church over its' inaction to the Darfur genocide without any right to...
Yet the American church is right there with the rest of the world, ignoring genocide and sin.

It's not hard to understand why. It's two completely different worlds, Darfur and America that is...

Here in America, we Christians try not to "sin" by avoiding cursing, stealing, and lust.
Yes, those things are sin...


But in Darfur, Sin sits on horseback wielding rifles and machine guns.


The problem with the Chruch in America, is that its' been "Americanizied."
There are so many Christian self-help books, and we are told by our own churches that we need to work on becoming better people.
To sum it up, the Church in America is telling its followers to focus on themselves, not on God or what we should be doing for Him.

The American church is dying, and so are innocent people in Darfur.

And sin is the reason for both, just different kinds of sin. I guess it just shows how much power sin really has in this world, that in one place it has an entire nation focused on itself, only so another sin can ride about freely on horseback killing whenever it wants to, unchallenged.

It is sad to think that the Church is doing nothing to help. I even emailed the pastor at my church, asking him if he would pray for Darfur in the congregational prayer we have after worship every Sunday...I never got a reply and it was not mentioned in service.

If you want to know more about what is happening to end the the violence in Darfur, you can go to the following websites:

www.savedarfur.org/
www.eyesondarfur.org/


This last one has actual video footage from Darfur that is in an upcoming film.

www.thedevilcameonhorseback.com

Find a way to help, if you can't find ways, I know of several.

In Christ,
Hackett