Back

TO THE FAMILY OF FAITH OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A MESSAGE OF GRATITUDE, CONDOLENCE, AND HOPE

Romans 8: 22-23

Brothers and Sisters, may the peace of Jesus Christ guide you, accompany you, and comfort you.

Confronted with the terrible happenings in New York and Washington the past Tuesday, the 11th, I have two strong feelings on my heart as I write to you. One is of gratitude and the other is of condolence, and the two meet to produce a great yearning for faith and hope.

My feeling of gratitude arises in response to acts of tremendous love and solidarity that you have shown for the situation of pain, destruction, death, and hopelessness that we, the people of Colombia, have suffered as a result of injustice, cruelty, and terrorism practiced by the armed groups, legal and illegal, in our territory. Many of you have supported justice and peace efforts for the Colombian people and churches, bravely rejecting the economic support representing millions of dollars in arms and war planes that the government of the United States gave to the Colombian government to help in its struggle against guerrilla and drug-trafficking. You see that this attitude is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. It is clear that violence only produces more violence and war, more destruction.

I recently returned from the United States where I had the privilege of meeting with various groups within the global family of faith. I see the face of God in your faces, my beloved brothers and sisters, in your acts of solidarity that are manifestations of tenderness among people. I saw how these small seeds of hope and love are growing between our peoples. I saw that among us, the global family of faith, the universe is our homeland and in this way we are not strangers, but sisters and brothers in faith, in love, and in hope.

I send my condolences, accompanied by fraternal pain, which arise in response to the images of destruction and death and the dazed and incredulous faces seen on television during the terrorist attack suffered by your nation, the most powerful in the world today.

I think that this act brings us closer together. Now that you, too, have experienced pain and fear, it is not necessary for you to imagine what it's like to live with insecurity and be exposed to a terrorist attack. Now that you have lived through it, you know that no government, no matter how strong, can protect us from the effects of evil, injustice, hate, and revenge.

With troubled hearts and tears in our eyes we say to you, may God protect you brothers and sisters. We understand, feel, and share your pain because it is also ours. We are one in the body of Christ and "when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers." We know what it means to suffer, the pain and the lashing of injustice, because this has been our daily bread all our lives. Who better than we to understand you, sisters and brothers, than we who have learned through our own misfortune? For this reason we tell you with deep pain in our souls that we understand your pain. My God comfort you and give you strength and courage to transform these acts for good, and not be tempted by seductive feelings of hatred and revenge.

While it is important that acts that destroy human life not end in impunity, Romans 12:17-21 invite us not to take revenge into our own hands, but to allow God to bring justice. We are called to overcome evil with good.

Now for my yearning for faith and hope. It is not new but rather makes itself manifest at this time. It has always been present, and my gratitude, combined with my condolences, only serve to make it more visible and necessary in these critical moments. Through the apostle Paul we know that in these end times, faced with violence and injustice, creation is crying out with birthing pain, and we, the global family of faith, groan with it, waiting for redemption. Brothers and sisters, every birth is painful. Through these acts that we suffer God is trying us and inviting us to be birth parents of the new history where evil is overcome by good, where the enemy is loved, where we can all live without fear, and where nations respect the human dignity of all people on Earth.

The solidarity that you have always showed for the pain of other peoples must not be lost with these recent acts that affect you directly. Rather, may your compassion increase with your own suffering and permit you to understand that it is in your country that the birthing process must begin. At this time the United States is the center of the world and what is done there has positive and negative repercussions in the other countries of the world. Citizens of the United States, like all other peoples, will enjoy or suffer the consequences sooner or later. "He who sows righteousness reaps a sure reward (Proverbs 11: 18)."

It seems very symbolic that precisely this passage on birthing new life (Romans 8:22-23) is included in Paul`s letter to the Romans, given that Rome was the center of the world in those times. I believe that this is a direct message to all the church of Christ that finds itself in the center of world political power, and that is where you are. What a great challenge and responsibility has come upon you today!

For this reason, brothers and sisters, having known your solidarity, your commitment to the message of Jesus, having been witnesses to your generosity; having known your capacity for biblical interpretation and above all your great human feeling, the global family of faith looks to you, filled with hope that you, from the center of the world, will begin a great campaign to keep the effects of evil, of hate, and of revenge from nesting in the souls of leaders and governments of the countries of the West. May you impede them from using their economic and military might against the people of the East and of the Third World that are as innocent as the inhabitants of New York and Washington, who were victims of humans alienated by pain, hate, and hunger for vengeance.

Let us unite in a great campaign of fasting, prayer, preaching, and song, and in so doing rise to the challenge of taking to your leaders, the government of the United States, and the governments to the West and to the East, the message that violence only brings more violence, that "hate is like salt water, the more one drinks, the thirstier one gets." It is time for the peoples of the earth to treat one another with respect, dignity, and solidarity. Only then can they calm the thirst of hate and vengeance felt by people that have been historically mistreated. War will only produce more hate and vengeance, and the people of the United States will not have peace and will only live in permanent anxiety.

It is time to birth a new world order, and the people of the United States have the historic opportunity to show the rest of the world how to really live civilly and with justice, without violence, without acts of death and destruction of innocent human lives, to return evil with good and take away from the terrorists the excuse for a holy war of hate and death.

With appreciation, respect, and gratitude,

Your brother in Christ and humanity,

Ricardo Esquivia Ballestas

Member of the Colombian Mennonite Church; Director of the Commission of Human Rights and Peace of the Counsel of Evangelical Churches of Colombia (CEDECOL); Director of Justapaz

Translated by Janna Bowman