Tears of the Sun

My wife and I watched Tears of the Sun last night. A Special-Ops commander leads his team into the Nigerian jungle to rescue a doctor who will only join them if they agree to save 70 refugees too. The movie has plenty of action and drama, and the atrocities we commit upon each other. It also deals with the worse kind of judgment: the valuation of people. The commander, played by Bruce Willis, is sent in to rescue only  a white German doctor. He learns the value of human life no matter the color, nationality, training, or status. His superiors who are insisting on rescuing only the doctor seem obviously the bad guys. Aren’t we guilty of the same thing?

In just 100 days in 1994, some 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists. They were targeting members of the minority Tutsi community, as well as their political opponents, irrespective of their ethnic origin. In an ongoing genocide, African farmers and others in Darfur are being systematically displaced and murdered at the hands of the Janjaweed. The genocide in Darfur has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over 2,500,000 people. More than one hundred people continue to die each day; five thousand die every month.

Consider starvation:

• 2.6 million deaths of children under 5 each year due to lack of food  .
• Every 12 seconds a child under 5 dies of hunger.
• One in four of the world’s children are stunted.
• 23 million children go to school hungry in Africa alone.

That’s just the children. They have parents suffering the unspeakable pain of watching their children die of starvation.

I understand we have problems here at home. The economy is in the toilet. Good people are out of work. People in America are killed because of the color of their skin. Taking down flags and building memorials are understandable, but how ridiculous we must look to that parent of a starving child or those who live in fear of death because of their tribal affiliation, or faith.

Yes many of these atrocities are happening to people because they follow Jesus. I understand that the problems of the world are enormous. Individually we can’t do much, but shouldn’t we be doing something?

Sorry to ruin your Sunday morning, but closing my eyes and trying not to see just isn’t working any more. Every life is valuable, whether it’s in Milton, Louisiana or Sudan. I need to do something. I just don’t know what.