My prayer for Darfur needed to be more effective

After Rwanda, many people vowed they’d never let such genocide happen again. But people have said that before, and today conditions in Darfur are much the same as they were in Rwanda—and in other countries, where the world stood by and allowed people to be sacrificed by the thousands.

A while ago, I heard a plea for people to write to their congressional representatives, urging them to send more money to help the African Union and to encourage NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) to intervene. Many have already been doing these things, as I have. But I felt I wanted to go deeper, to pray deeply enough so that the roots of genocide could be pulled out.

As I examined the praying I’d already done, I realized that my prayers have embraced the victims with compassion, affirming that they are included in God’s great love and that this divine Love meets their needs. My prayers have also acknowledged blessing and protection and the assurance of eternal life for those who have fallen victim to torture and murder.

But when it came to praying for the perpetrators of these deeds, I found it hard to be specific. They were included only in the sense that all prayers to a universal God are universal in scope. I knew this was where I needed to go deeper.

Then a sentence in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy caught my attention: “The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus’ time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation” (xi:9-14 ).

I had been rejoicing in the idea of sunlight representing the light of spiritual understanding, and recognizing that nothing can obscure the light of God’s goodness. This freeing light is as present in Darfur as in any other country. And the fact that this light overcomes darkness, instead of the darkness of tragedy putting out the light, was most inspiring to me.

With these ideas, I gained a great hope that the actions of the Janjaweed (a militia group charged with committing atrocities in Darfur), and those in the Sudanese Army who are aiding them, could and would necessarily give place to reformation.

Man, the creation of God, is not a rapist, a murderer, a torturer. These sins, which have nothing to do with God’s man or woman, must give place to understanding, helpfulness, gentleness and goodness. No matter how much these sins may argue that they are justified by political and tribal reasoning, they must be acknowledged as sin. As a mistake must be seen as a mistake before it can be corrected, so sin against one’s fellow beings must be seen in all its horror and it must be forsaken.

Reformation begins with the truth that man, the generic term for the sons and daughters of God, is made in God’s likeness. The likeness of divine Life—which you and I and everyone are--never harms another, and would never take life. He is not filled with passions and hatred. He is not drunk with revenge and greed. Furthermore, this man of God’s creating cannot be tricked into believing he belongs to a superior group and that others outside this racial or doctrinal group are to be extinguished.

The man of God’s creating is not an abuser or an accuser. When Jesus was confronted with a group of men accusing a woman of adultery, he said to them simply, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

It was what Jesus did next that has inspired me to transform my prayers for those self-justifying sinners in Darfur. He turned his eyes away and wrote on the ground. Obviously he was so sure of the power of self-knowledge that he didn’t stare at the men as their sins were being revealed to them. And when the last one had left, he said to the woman, “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:4-11 ).

Can we be as sure as our Master that sin does indeed expose itself for what it is and lead to reformation? While the deeds in Darfur may well be beyond our imagination in their evil, I am sure that our prayers affirming man’s innocence will pull away the self-deception that would allow and excuse this brutal behavior.

Now my prayers are invigorated with the assurance that they will help liberate the victims of villainy, even to healing them physically of their wounds and maltreatment. And this prayer will also help rouse the sinners to hate their ways and turn from them.

Perhaps what I’ve learned from this experience is that the sinner needs our prayers even more than his victim. And both will find salvation from sin’s torture as those who trust God answer aright the question posed in the book of Job, “And upon whom doth not his light arise?” (Job 25:3 ) This passage from the Bible helped me to understand, more than ever before, that Jesus came into the world so that his Christly teaching might save the sinner, which frees all of sin’s victims.

It says so clearly that the light of spiritual understanding is shining in every heart—in Darfur as well as in your heart and mine, even when we don’t fully perceive its power. To do our part is to cherish this light in our own hearts even as we embrace the firm conviction that the individual of God’s creating cannot be driven by hatred, by the desire to harm or kill. And that God’s infinite Love can surround those who are threatened with harm and can guide them to safety.

Perhaps the hardest part for any of us will be to keep this assurance alive until all evidence of evil is gone, and peace prevails. But as we do this, the whole world will be benefited.

Prayers for light and Love:

Science and Health
74:21-23
215:15-18

King James Bible
I John 1:7