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?
No comments:
Post a Comment