Searching for Balm in Gilead
Reading Nigerian news plunges me down into a grey hopelessness. I read reports on the attacks in Borno. Amnesty International writes of attacks killing more than 50 and abductions of 30-40 girls in Konduga village on 11 February, of the killing of over 100 people in Izghe and Baga on 15 February. It is hard […]
Reading Nigerian news plunges me down into a grey hopelessness. I read reports on the attacks in Borno. Amnesty International writes of attacks killing more than 50 and abductions of 30-40 girls in Konduga village on 11 February, of the killing of over 100 people in Izghe and Baga on 15 February. It is hard to keep track. Every time I search I find reports of different massacres.
I also read of lynchings of people accused of being homosexuals, after President Jonathan signed the law criminalizing same sex relationships and association with those in such relationships last month. I read of police tracking the movements and organizing sting operations on private people minding their own business. This law, which has encouraged brutal mob actions against those accused of being gay, comes in a time when people are dying daily on dangerous roads, when people are being slaughtered daily in Borno. Is “gayness” being used as a scapegoat to take attention away from infrastructural and security failures?
“Let he who is without sin throw the first stone,” Jesus said to the Pharisees when a woman caught in the act of adultery was brought to him. I wonder when lawmakers, many of whom have been tabloid fodder for their own alleged infidelities, will be as swift to address these public horrors as they are to criminalize the private associations of “other” consenting adults.
I read tabloid news I missed from December that Senator Yerima allegedly married another 15 year old bride after divorcing the girl he married at 14, now 17 and a mother. I cannot find a reputable news source to verify if it is true.
Wednesday, there are reports of another attack on Bama.
There is a point at which you can no longer write. What can you say week after week when the northeast is being decimated? When hundreds are killed every week? The government needs to do more. Nigerians in areas unaffected by the crisis need to say and do more. Yes. Yet, I can understand the feeling of helplessness that rises like fog among us. There is so little I can do sitting in America. I feel like a hypocrite even having this column. What we need are reports from people in Borno, the voices of people there. I wish they were not so utterly cut off from communication. What can I even say to readers suffering through this un-named war?
In these times, I look to poetry for comfort, but I cannot think of poetry that speaks to a situation as severe as this until I remember the poetry of the Old Testament that recounts the suffering of the people of Israel under waves of invaders, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians. The brutal Assyrians slaughtered the inhabitants of towns they invaded, deported entire populations, and took conquered women as sex slaves. The prophet Hosea prophesied they would rip open pregnant women and dash babies on the ground.
The Prophet Isaiah laments (59:9-11),
“So justice is far from us,
and righteousness does not reach us.
We look for light, but all is darkness;
for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows.
Like the blind we grope along the wall,
feeling our way like people without eyes.
At midday we stumble as if it were twilight;
among the strong, we are like the dead.
We all growl like bears;
we moan mournfully like doves.
We look for justice, but find none; for deliverance, but it is far away.”
The “Weeping Prophet” Jeremiah cries out (8:21-9:1),
“Since my people are crushed, I am crushed;
I mourn, and horror grips me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?
Oh, that my head were a spring of water
And my eyes a fountain of tears!
I would weep day and night
For the slain of my people.”
The ancient prophets understood suffering as the judgment of God, but within their texts are the seeds of a new understanding of grace to come several hundred years later. In Lamentations 33:32-33, Jeremiah writes of the Lord,
“though he brings grief, he will show compassion
So great is his unfailing love.
For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.”
Almost 600 years later, Jesus, now beloved of both Muslims and Christians, proclaimed this love as the salvation of the world, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another” (John 13:34). Jesus taught with his actions, showing compassion to the poor and the outcast and those publically reviled as sinners. “I did not come to judge the world, but to save it,” he tells his followers, “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness” (John 12:46-47).While predicting his own death, he offers peace to the suffering: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. […] Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:18-19, 27).
Jesus’s teachings of love and peace were reiterated by his followers. Paul writes to the Thessalonian church: “But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one. We have confidence in the Lord that you are doing and will continue to do the things we command. May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance.” (2 Thessalonians 3:3-5). He ends with the prayer in verse 16. “Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you.”
In the decades following the life of Jesus, early Christians were persecuted. According to church tradition, Paul was beheaded during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero. The apostle John was one of the few close friends of Jesus who was spared, though he died in captivity. Scholars think that he was probably the only surviving apostle when he wrote the book of I John, in which he reiterates (4:16-18), “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.”
John writes of love during a time when many of his closest friends had been murdered and others faced severe persecution. Tradition had failed them. The imperial government betrayed them. They were preyed upon by sadists and psychopaths. Yet, he repeats Jesus’s words about love as the light that will save the world. In the cycle of dark centuries, this love remains constant, a steadfast “light of life,” a choice each person can make in how to live and act towards others. This belief in a transcendent goodness, which hatred and death cannot conquer, is a hope to grasp onto when it seems like all else failed.