Addressing Dressing by Undressing?

Malawi's Capital City has been hit by a wave of harassment from street vendors who are attacking women who wear trousers in public, the most common forms of attack being loud jeering, name-calling, and stripping the women naked to have them walk around in the nude. While this horrible abuse of women has been done in the streets in full view of everyone, away from view a more sinister horror has been taking place in the hearts of many onlookers; namely the twisted sense of enjoyment, entertainment, and amusement that many have found in the occurrence of these abuses. Instead of mass repudiation of the vendors' actions, there is mass legitimization of their actions. The President's spokesman has legitimized the abuses by saying that the Head of State has more important things to worry about than the actions of a few mindless thugs who want to try his patience. And if Mr. Ntaba is to be believed (and he very often isn't), apparently in another classic exercise in missing the point, the government thinks these vendors' actions are more against it than against women! And so the abuses have continued and spread to other cities, even spilling over into residential areas.

But there are other ways in which the vendors' actions have been legitimized. For example, some are now advising women to stop wearing their trousers in order to be safe, which is just a dignified way of undressing them all the same. Others have continue to buy merchandise from vendors, even merchandise for women, which is just another way of telling the vendors that their presence on the streets is still justified in spite of how abusive they are to the wives, sisters, and mothers for whom we buy those things. Still another way of legitimization is our silence whenever we hear people talking about these horrible acts in a jocular and cavalier manner. But it is not nearly enough to notice this frenzy of amusement in something for which our disgust and indignation are better suited. We must also ask the bigger and potentially more disturbing question about what these abuses and our tolerance of them tell us about the state of the nation; nay, we must ask what ALL the woes the nation is facing tell us about the state the nation is in. And having wrestled with this question for days, with a sense of trepidation and trembling of the knees, I can't help but wonder if my country is in the early phases of a state of JUDGMENT; the kind from which the only way back is a nation-wide repentance of Ninevite proportions!

Before you take my word for it or dismiss it, think about every nation or society that is described in Scripture as having come under the disciplinary hand of God. More poignantly, think about the typical forms of discipline exacted towards nations that turn a deaf ear to the prophetic voices crying out from the wilderness for a way and path to be made straight in preparation for the coming of the Lord. For Sodom, judgment's first knock on the door was their loss of restraint from committing shameful acts of homosexuality in the light of the noonday sun. For Egypt, judgment's first knock was the hardening of the heart of their Head of State and his turning a deaf ear to the cries of his people. For Tyre, judgment's first knock was the forfeiting of control of their wealth and treasures to foreign entities. For Rome, judgment's first knock was God's decision to "hand them over" to do in public and without shame the sins they loved to do in private and of which they refused to repent. For Judah, judgment's first knock was the cutting off of the nation's supply of basic goods and services. For Israel, judgment's first knock was the multiplying of false prophets with flattering lips and shining visions. For Jerusalem, judgment's first knock was the hateful abuse and harassment of women who were left naked and bare in the streets.

I cannot say definitively that my country is under judgment, but I can say definitively that if that's what all these woes are about, then our problems cannot be solved by the president alone. I can say definitively that the problems of this nation are the sum total of what all of us have been doing as inhabitants of this nation. The economic and social deterioration of our country is not the cause of what's wrong with the nation, but a result of it. All that the economic troubles have done is make public the sinful things and filthy idols we have all been hiding. We have been hiding our secret worship of leaders in the "Mose wa Lero" spirit, and it has now been exposed by a publicly broken system for which we can think of no one else to turn to for answers or blame but our deified president. We have been hiding our secret worship of money, and it has now been exposed by our public attempts to bribe and illegally sell and buy services for which we don't want to wait our turn or offer freely out of the kindness we call umunthu. We have been hiding our secret worship of self, and it has now been exposed by a fuel crisis in which the only car I can think of getting fuel for is mine, to the point of getting myself a full tank and two jerrycans of fuel when there already isn't enough to go around. We have been hiding our secret worship of success, and it has now been exposed by short supplies in many commodities for which we are willing to cut in line, lie, and cheat just to get ahead of others. And we have been hiding our secret worship of sex in the private undressing and caressing of women who are not our wives, and it has now been exposed by our tolerance of their undressing in public.

So in the end, it turns out that the state our country is in reveals more about the sins I need to repent of than the problems the president needs to fix for me. And if repentance does not happen for a majority of our nation's citizens, this early state of judgment is bound to get worse before it gets better. So as we have done on countless occasions through the singing of the wise words of our national anthem, let us pray God to "join together all our hearts as one that we may be free..." And for my part, this need for personal repentance and this call for national repentance may be where my reflection now ends, but it is where my own repentance now begins. What about you?

Why I am Afraid of The President?

The most ancient questions ought to be asked to the most modern generation. So it is no surprise that one of the most relevant questions for our time was already asked by a man from Tarsus twenty centuries ago: "Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority?" Two personal experiences should be enough to show the relevance of this question for our time. The first occurred one morning as I was driving to my office from my house. Further up the road I saw a police check point, and as I got closer, one of the uniformed officers signaled for me to pull over. As he checked the credentials of my car, a second officer was also gearing up to stop another car that was driving up to that junction from another direction. But instead of pulling over for an examination, the driver switched gears and started reversing away from the check point at an alarming speed. Upon seeing the car speeding away, the two officers both asked to commandeer my car, and when I obliged, they both jumped into my car and urged me to put my foot on the gas (fuel was readily available back then) and go in pursuit of the speeding car. The chase was exhilarating, but neither my car nor my skills behind the wheel were good enough to catch the assailants. In this instance, the Police's motivation for the chase was authority, namely the authority the Law gives them to investigate and arrest those suspected of breaking the established law of the land. This kind of authority is obviously a real cause of fear only to those that are breaking the law, a fear that I on this occasion did not experience. I knew that these officers had the best kind of authority; a form of authority that Scripture says comes from God himself, the authority to punish wrongdoing. According to Scripture, God has sanctioned governments to use this kind of authority to commend those who do what is right and punish those who do what is wrong. In other words, the exercise of this authority is dictated by what is right and what is wrong, or dictated by law, not men. Thus in submitting myself to this authority by obeying the just laws it is based on and by subjecting myself to its open and public inspection, I found myself freed from any fear of the one in authority. And I am pleased to find that this is precisely what Scripture says I should expect: "Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended." The second experience happened recently as I was sitting in my car waiting in line for fuel at a gas station that had no fuel. Though at no point in my life did I ever think that I'd find it normal to get in line for fuel at a gas station that had none, most gas stations in the city have had no fuel for days, and cars just wait in line in hope that any day now someone whose job it is to bring fuel into the country will either come back from their two-year holiday or get fired. On this particular day, there were also many people whose cars were either already out of fuel or in such short supply that they could not drive to the filling station to fill up, and so had to buy fuel in Jerrycans, popularly and affectionately called zigubu. A few hours of waiting was all it took for half a dozen police to show up in an armored vehicle. They proceeded to confiscate all the jerrycans that had queued for fuel, and doing so without discrimination or explanation. When they had collected all the jerrycans they had found at that filling station, they jumped back into their car and drove off. Now the law allows people to buy fuel in jerrycans IF they have a permit to do so, but these uniformed police officers did not even bother to check who did or did not have a permit to buy fuel in a jerrycan. Of course I have no doubt that not everyone with a jerrycan had a permit that day, but even in that case, a person without a permit ONLY breaks the law when they actually buy the fuel. It is not against any law of this land or any conceivable just law in the conscience of good men either to own an empty jerrycan or to stand in a line with other empty jerrycans. In addition, for the past two years in which fuel shortages have been most acute, many people have been buying fuel in jerrycans without permits and under the supervision of the same police officers who are now suddenly anti-jerrycan! Clearly in this instant, the police officers' actions were not motivated by the authority that comes from the established laws of the land or the universal just laws of conscience. This was an authority of a different kind, not the sort that comes from God or is dictated by laws of right and wrong. This was an authority dictated by men, not laws, and it brings fear even to those that keep the law. The man from Tarsus says: "Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right!" Where the State commends right doing and punishes wrong doing according to the dictates of the law, doing what is right means keeping the law and subjecting yourself to its public inspection. Where the State punishes the law keepers along with the law breakers according to the private dictates of men, doing what is right means refusing to obey any law whose keeping does not protect you from the weapons of law enforcers, and refusing to be inspected and punished anywhere that is not a public court of law. For the law is there to tell us the bad things men are capable of doing when they show no regard for the law, and the law employs the police to protect us from such men; but when the men who show no regard for the law are police officers themselves, then the laws of conscience must employ the people to protect themselves. For anyone in uniform who shows no regard for the law is no longer a law enforcer but a criminal, and any ruler who gives them a directive to act without regard to the law is no longer a ruler but a gang lord. And if breaking the law makes you afraid of police officers, it is because those officers are under the authority of a ruler who upholds the law. But if keeping the law does not make your fear go away, it is because those officers are under the authority of a ruler who only cares about God and his laws if the god in question is the ruler himself! Half of my nation has believed the lie that doing and saying nothing will free us from fear of the one in authority. The other half has believed the lie that doing harm to the one in authority will free us from fear of him. But the truth is that doing what is right is the only way I will ever find freedom from fear of the one in authority, and doing what is right begins with saying what is being done wrong, saying it humbly, publicly, and openly.

Crisis? What Crisis!

My country has been in a state of steady deterioration for the better part of the last three years, and we have not yet reached the bottom. To be sure, there are unprecedented levels of scarcity of basic services and commodities such as fuel, electricity, and forex, making it hard to do most things that contribute to the prosperity and peace of a nation. Factories can't operate in the absence of power, businesses can't import in the absence of forex, and employees and goods can't be mobilized in the absence of fuel. Even so, the country has not yet reached rock bottom. You see, in the middle of these woes and the nonsensical excuses of politicians, it has been easy to forget that our nation was in a crisis of leadership long before it was in a crisis of economics. A pivotal six month period in which a series of bad decisions were made by one leader have held the country hostage economically, socially, and spiritually: the decision to plaster nepotistic propaganda all over the media as to who is fit to be the next president has robed us all of the chance to engage in a democratic nation-wide debate about the nation's future; the decision to oust a foreign diplomat for saying what everyone with an ounce of common sense already knew to be true not only proved that his criticism was accurate but also robed us all of many friends and a chance to break free from the chains of foreign aid at our own pace and on our own terms; the decision to introduce a zero-deficit budget to compensate for the abrupt severance of foreign aid robed us all of a chance to increase our contribution to the cost of government by the gradual increase of productivity instead of the arbitrary increase of taxes; the decision to sign into law a piece of legislation that would give government the power to silence and intimidate the media robed us all of a chance to hold the government accountable for things it hopes to keep out of the public's eye; the decision to go on a month long holiday while the country reeled in a state of free fall robed us of any hope of feeling that our leader's priorities for the nation's recovery are the same as ours. To be fair, one of this government's strengths is its decisiveness, and in a way it is refreshing to see a leader who is not afraid to make a bad decision. It takes a great deal of courage to do that. But if our country is going to recover, it will require not just one leader, but a coalition of good leaders who are not afraid to make a right decision, especially when the idea needed to make the right decision comes from their critics or inferiors. My faith teaches me not to lose hope that the same president who got us into these turbulent waters can be used by Providence to also be the captain that steers us out. And so it remains my prayer that his next three years will be so good as to make the last three years a laughable memory, and I pray this happens while the public's anger remains lower than its apathy. God bless Malawi.