Bring the Fire, Sing in the Smoke: Lessons on Suffering and Forgiveness from the Church in Sudan

As we boarded the 1943 DC3, the NGO providing our logistics noted that they didn’t like leaving their plane on the ground any longer than absolutely necessary, as it had been hit numerous times by other careless pilots. Their planes are like New York taxis on the tarmac. Carcasses of MiG fighters and retired Russian Antonov planes littered the fields around the runway, testifying to the wild and unpredictable nature of life in Sudan.

Wild and Unpredictable: Life in Sudan

Life here just doesn’t seem as precious. A government transport crashed just one month before—killing forty souls on board. Overloaded, it lacked sufficient lift to carry its payload a meager few kilometers from takeoff. The plane sat where it met its fate, looters striping anything of value, the news a mere blip in the headlines.

I just spent a week in Yida camp with a group training leaders in trauma counseling, only five kilometers from the Sudan border in a contested hot zone near the Nuba Mountains. With close to 50 percent prevalence of PTSD, 300,000 refugees have been seeking shelter in this remote location off the beaten path. The Government of Sudan (GoS) has systematically destroyed what paltry infrastructure existed among the ninety-nine tribes of Nuba and the oil rich Blue Nile. Christians especially have been targeted, as the GoS’s mixed motives of oil-greed, Islamic conquest, and genocide have played out on the Southern border.

Sudan’s capital city Khartoum carries out their Islamist expansion exuberantly—with zeal—despite their lack of sophisticated military equipment. Barrel bombs, strafing, bold cross border infiltrations, bombing of schools and hospitals, and the sending of instigators to terrorize and burn are common tactics. Though mostly Muslims, the Nuba peoples are African and loyal to the fractious SPLM—Sudan People’s Liberation Movement—which earned them the label enemy, even after the separation of the two countries and the creation of South Sudan—the world’s youngest state—just three years ago. The Arabs to the north seem to not want anything less than the extermination of Africans, and especially Christians from their area. Darfur has seen a genocide and long history of atrocities with over a million dead and ten years of unchecked, systematic violence. Overall, in this brutal civil war of North vs. South, Muslim vs. Christian, Arab vs. African, roughly two million have died.

The Atrocity Du Jour: Indifference for and Ignorance of Sudan’s Crisis

Like a boring TV channel, the world now surfs past the Sudan story with glassy eyed indifference. Though convicted in absentia and wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, Omar al-Bashir leads with an iron fist, even visiting foreign countries with seeming impunity. Syria, Iraq, ISIS, and the world’s’ greatest refugee crisis of modern history have largely overshadowed Sudan’s issues, replacing Darfur and Rwanda as the issues of conscience du jour.

In the midst of this chaos, many churches and NGO’s are caring for the displaced and needy, drilling wells, equipping leaders and lighting candles of hope. Light, even though dim, does its best work in the darkest, most hopeless black.

Refugees Serving Refugees

Standing alongside these brave men—some Arabs, some African, many of them former Muslims and victims of the Bashir regime—my own faith is bolstered. Many of these have done prison time, having fled from the North, living lives of simple faith, laboring tirelessly. Most live away from their families, keeping homes in other refugee camps or cities in neighboring countries so their children can receive proper schooling, and their wives can be sheltered from the violence and conquer-by-rape tactics of an evil, anything-goes war. But here, refugees serve other refugees.

Burning Faith

After a few days of training in one refugee camp, trying to relax in our tents in the 100-degree heat one evening, a messenger rushed to tell us that the church we had been using was on fire. The pastor was devastated but stalwart. This congregation had built their humble house of worship from wood and thatch, carved seating from exotic hardwoods that would have been at home as a centerpiece architectural element in any Western home, and constructed an altar and pulpit with care using precious concrete, a cross marking its purpose. The structure was still smoldering when we went back the next morning. But instead of weeping, we heard worship. The sounds of devotion and singing. Singing in the smoke.

Admittedly, I was angry, I wanted justice. I echoed Isaiah “From the ends of the earth we hear singing: “Glory to the Righteous One.” But I said, “I waste away, I waste away! Woe to me! The treacherous betray!” Singing?

Sudanese Christians have honed their responses to persecution through much practice. They have learned from Paul and Silas who sang while in prison. They have applied the Colossian directive to “admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts” amidst the greatest of tests. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the great Spanish author said “He who sings scares away his woes.” Perhaps it is simply that. The singing that day scared away any fear of my own and taught me, next to smoldering ruins in the middle of a war-torn desert, what it really means to worship.