To the Anabaptist-Mennonite Churches of the United States of America:
A Message of Gratitude, Condolence, and Hope
by Ricardo Esquivia Ballestas
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 September 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.
I see the face of God in your faces, my beloved brothers and sisters, in the 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’s 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 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. May 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 invites 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.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.
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.
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!
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 message that violence only brings more violence. It is time for the peoples of the earth to treat one another with respect, dignity, and solidarity. Only then can they calm the hate and vengeance felt by people who have been historically mistreated. War will only produce more hate and vengeance, and the people of the US 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 US 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.
Your brother in Christ and humanity,
Ricardo Esquivia Ballestas
Ballestas, of the Colombian Mennonite Church, is Director of the Commission of Human Rights and Peace of the Council of Evangelical Churches of Colombia (CEDECOL), and Director of Justapaz.
