thoughts on Rwanda's history

                  After about 30 hours of travel, I am in Rwanda. On my flight I began to read a book that my aunt gave to me entitled "Mirror to the Church: Resurrecting Faith after Genocide in Rwanda.” I am embarrassed to admit that before reading the book, I really did not know much about Rwanda's history. Sure, I had watched Hotel Rwanda (many years ago) and I had a picture in my head of little boys with guns and many gruesome death scenes. I knew that a horrible genocide had taken place, but beyond that, I could not tell you much. This book helped to open my eyes to the divisions behind the genocide and how they originated. For those of you who know about as much as I did, I will share with you what I have learned.

                  The Tutsis and the Hutus are two different groups in Rwanda. These groups originated as a fluid class distinction. The Tutsis tended to be wealthier because they owned cattle, and the Hutus were in charge of agriculture. However, you a Hutu could trade cattle for produce and become a Tutsi and the Tutsi could lose cattle or marry down and become a Hutu. Sadly, it seems that the political differences between the Hutus and Tutsis were actually imposed by European settlers back in the late 1800s who brought the idea of race to Rwanda. They decided that the Tutsis had physical features that showed their Assyrian descent and made up superior to the Hutus, and so they gave positions of power to the Tutsis and only allowed Tutsis to attend the Christian schools. Over time, the identities of Tutsi and Hutu became so ingrained in Rwandans that they divided themselves this way and they understood themselves through this identity.

                  Before the genocide, Rwanda was considered the most Christian nation, but sadly their tribal blood ran deeper than the baptism in Christ that they all shared. The real question that the book was asking was how much of an impact did the gospel have in their country? Based on the events of 1994, the answer seems obvious: if you can kill your neighbor, when one of the greatest commandments of the Bible is to love your neighbor, then obviously it did not have much influence in their daily lives. The book said that many of the 800,000 people killed were actually killed inside of churches. The Tutsis and Hutus were not opposing tribes; they were neighbors who lived together, worshiped together, and did life together. When the Hutus were told to kill their Tutsi neighbors, it was either abide or be killed. The Hutus used machetes to do much of the killing. As I sit on the patio of the guest house I am staying in and watch a gardener use a machete to cut some weeds, I can imagine how personal and the gruesome the massacre must have been.

                  It may be easy for me to sit here judge the Rwandans, but if I look into our own society, and even my own life, I can ask the same question—how much of an impact has Christ had on my life? And in our nation? Would we really look any different if no one claimed to be Christian? In Romans 12:2, the apostle Paul writes “do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This should be a fresh lens in which we view ourselves and the world around us. Christianity is meant to shape a new identity in us in which we have a new view of we—one that is in Christ instead of political identity, race, etc. Do I view myself as a Christian above every other identity that I use to define me?

                  The book says, “we are functions of how we imagine ourselves and how others imagine us—and that itself is the connected to the stories that we tell ourselves and the stories others tell about us.” It is important for us to question the patterns that shape our lives and our identities. For me, this book gave me a lot of food for thought and a fresh lens to view my experiences here, as almost every person I will meet has been impacted by the events in 1994. Today, no one in Rwanda is allowed to say the words “Tutsi” or “Hutu.” I wonder how many people still use this distinction as a lens to view their world, even if it is unspoken.