Tonight I cried in a movie theater. Tears streamed down my face as my lip and entire jaw quivered as I tried to control the sobs. When the credits finally rolled the dam burst and I sobbed and sobbed. My heart was broken by man’s inhumanity to man. Our capacity for extreme evil on one hand, and intentional ignorance on the other.

My wife and I went to see Hotel Rwanda tonight, the true story of one man saving 1,200 refugees from the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In 1994 I was a freshman in high school, busy yo-yoing in the hallways and trying to survive Advanced Geometry. Around the world one million people were slaughtered.

It breaks my heart that the world did nothing. It breaks my heart that my country did nothing. It breaks my heart that the church–or at least my corner of the church–did nothing. It breaks my heart that I did nothing–I can only repeat the words I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know.

I’m still at a loss, but I’d echo Steve Knight’s comments. He has a great reactionary post, encouraging people to get involved to stop the genocide happening in Sudan. Check out his entry and the resources he links to. I’m still working my through them and trying to figure out how I should respond.

In general, I so far have three main thoughts:

1) The church.
I’m especially broken that the church has not stepped up and spoken out with one voice against injustices like Rwanda and Sudan. I know some have spoken out, I know the church is waking up, especially in the wake of AIDS ravaging Africa, but I wish more of us would hear the cry. Someone (I don’t remember if it was Steve or Jordon Cooper or Brian McLaren. UPDATE: It was McLaren.) suggested that churches should be rallying their people to see Hotel Rwanda—The Passion of the Christ may be the church’s story, but Hotel Rwanda is Jesus today.

2) The military.
From what little I know of the Rwanda genocide, the only reason it ended is because the rebel forces won. They fought back against the killers and stopped it. To me this is a strong argument for the neccessity of a just war. Sitting on the sidelines with peace keeping forces did nothing.

At the same time I’m ashamed of the military might of the U.S. We have the technology, the power, the weaponry to destroy anything we want. But we don’t have the tact, the skill, the presence, the will, the people to stop genocide, to keep the peace, to put an end to bloody conflicts. We’re really good at blowing shit up, but we can’t save lives. I wish we’d spend less money on blunt force and more money on training the kind of peace keepers needed to stop genocide. I can see a similiar application in Iraq where soldiers need to know how to relate to and work with Iraqis, not just kill them.

3) Inconsequential.
After watching a movie like this everything else becomes inconsequential. My life of talking about blogs and worrying about church postcards and whether or not I should buy another Pepsi and get a free song from iTunes seems like such a pile of worthlessness. What’s a Darth Vader sprinkler in the face of such atrocities? It seems so ridiculous. I know my heart will grow callous again, and in a way it has to. But I hope I remember. My heart should break when I hear about things like Darfur. And I should act. I hope I will. I hope I’ll never simply shake my head and cluck my tongue and go back to my chicken tenders.