On Monday, the rains came and washed the dry season away. It’s a remarkable time of year here in Cambodia. Overnight, the dusty brown countryside turns vibrant green. Even here, in the city, you can feel the shift of the seasons in the air. It’s much like the cool crisp snap of Autumn in North America that tingles the senses and alerts you to the fact that summer is over. The temperature dropped dramatically overnight and the breeze made for such restorative sleep.

Yet, last night, I had trouble sleeping. My mind kept going back to a news story that I’d read about Belarus using a military aircraft to ground an international flight from Greece to Lithuania so that they could abduct an online critic and his girlfriend. The title ‘online critic’ probably doesn’t give the young man enough credit but I use it intentionally to highlight the power differential. A sovereign state hijacked a civilian international flight in order to abduct a 26 year old ‘online critic’ and his girlfriend. The hopelessness and terror that must be consuming them. I prayed for the two of them again and again as they were likely being tortured and forced to confess to high crimes.

I was born a few years before the end of the Cold War and was old enough to not only remember but to understand what the Fall of the Berlin Wall meant. For most of my youth, the world seemed to be on an optimistic trajectory – armed conflict around the world was in decline, global standards of living were on the rise, and democracy was spreading. I was idealistic. If the Fall of the Berlin Wall signified the start of this optimistic era, 9/11 signaled it’s end and the start of more cynical era. Of course, things were never actually as optimistic as they seemed to me as a child growing up in the United States and the spread of the internet has revealed a lot of evil that was hidden then. I think it’s one of the reasons so many people have such deep distrust of authorities and facts – because we were all lied to. Many times. Our idealism was exploited.

But my idealism didn’t go away. It’s still there. I think that’s one reason why this kind of evil still sits with me so. I feel such rage and sorrow. I also feel impotent. I know this is evil but I don’t know to stop it. There’s a scene in the 2008 movie Iron Man where Tony Stark, CEO of a weapons manufacturer, first uses his superhero suit to stop a group of terrorists from killing people with the weapons his company produced. It’s such wish fulfillment. If only someone could just jet over, make it all right, and stop all the bad things. If only it were that simple. That longing for a human savior who will force things to be right in this world. Maybe more than that it’s a longing to correct our sins by simply getting rid of the bad people?

As a Christian, I know that we can’t force things to be ‘right’ in this world because we are inherently ‘wrong’. We can’t bring the justice that we so desperately long for because we are unjust. Our deep sense that ‘we were made for more than this’ can only be fulfilled by channeling something that is more than us. In the Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis writes, “I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves.” Sometimes it is a relief to be humbled. To know that I am small and broken. That my best isn’t good enough. That I must rely on God’s grace.

I think the news from Belarus hit me especially hard because of its resonance with the situation in Myanmar. Young men and women being murdered, tortured, and disappeared because a few military leaders – who hold so much wealth and power – are afraid of online dissent and peaceful protest. I should be clear to say that it’s not just the young but – as in Colombia, Hong Kong, and so many others places – the majority of them are young. Young and desperate for a better future. The kind of optimistic future that I took for granted as a child.

We have been working desperately on a response to the crisis in Myanmar – I don’t know how much of that I’ll be able to share publicly due to the security concerns – but we’ve often felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the human suffering. Just as we feel overwhelmed by the enormity of human suffering and human evil around the world. Why is humanity so cruel to its members and why is humanity so accepting of that cruelty?

I think God’s reassurance to me is that 2 Timothy 1:7 keeps coming to mind.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

2 Timothy 1:7, KJV

The spirit of fear isn’t of God. Instead, we’ve been given spirits of power, love, and a sound mind. There’s such assurance there.

• What a relief to know that God has given us a spirit of power and that we don’t have to rely on our own woefully insufficient capabilities. What a blessing to be able to rely on God’s power rather than our own devices. As Paul wrote in First Corinthians, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
• Paul writes beautifully – again – in First Corinthians about how useless our personal gifts and talents are if we don’t act with love. It doesn’t matter how capable we are if we’re not acting out of love. When I feel that black rage raising up in me as I hear these stories of human suffering and evil, it can be almost impossible to stay connected with that spirit of love. If it’s disconnecting me from the spirit of love, I don’t think it’s from God.
• It helps me to stay disciplined when I’m able to stay grounded in my own weakness and reliance on God. Two years ago I wrote about the book Don’t Follow Your Heart and this excerpt came to mind, “Our hearts were never designed to be followed, but to be led. Our hearts were never meant to be gods in whom we believe, but to believe in God.“