Goodwill to all men is an easy thing to claim, but not to live up to. Kenya is a nation in which the vast majority claims belief in a Supreme Being and follows rules of trust — faith — in that being’s divine prescription for personal conduct. It is, however, difficult to see proof of fidelity to these covenants.
The nation is riven with faultlines over matters of race, ethnicity, political belief, religious faith, inter-religious practice and more. More so than many other nations (as was proved between 2005 and last year), but not as bad as those intractable crises that tear apart the Middle East, parts of India or Pakistan and other nations.
People tend to see the crisis of nationhood we face, and the unprecedented violence it spurred, in superlative terms. But considered in the light of other nation’s problems, ours remain relatively less complex, more likely to submit to amicable solutions.
As we join the world in taking a holiday break and the Christian community globally in marking the birth of The Christ, we wish to urge Kenyans of all faiths (and of no faith) to think over how a lack of fidelity to beliefs we claim leads to injustice, intolerance and conflict that might be avoided. This is true not just of the basic edicts of our faiths but of ideas and ideals like democracy, respect for individual rights, rule of law and so on. As long as we claim to believe in these things but exclude those who we don’t like or consider different when acting on the ideals, our hypocrisy invites justifiable anger and resentment.
Disguised hate
Intolerance and hate can and often are disguised as teachings or edicts by religious leaders. Human history is littered with corpses of innocent people whose only sin was to look, think, believe or act differently. Incredible atrocities have been committed in the name of religion, often by people violating the more sacrosanct of their faith’s tenets. While in these modern times a greater effort has been made to allow co-existence of different faiths, there remains a tendency to abuse the rights of religious minorities. At its ugliest in Kenya, ancient religions were compared to Satanism and public emotion riled up against entire communities. Undertones of the same intolerance can be noted today in the two largest faiths. As the nation prepares to enter a new decade in the second millennium, we urge all church leaders to remember the precepts underlying the existence of their faiths — not just those supporting their religions. Let goodwill be extended to all men not, as some prefer to read the Scripture, only toward men with whom we think God is pleased. After all, it is teachings like ‘Love thy neighbour’ and ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ that transcend faith (or lack thereof) and hold a promise of peace on earth.
Intolerance of others in secular leadership is just as insidious. While some ideas about how we manage the planet have been triumphant over others (capitalism and democracy in their many flavours, for instance) the promise they hold to give all a voice or an opportunity to make something of themselves is easily thwarted if those espousing the ideals abandon them when they prove to be inconvenient.
Just as the leaders of our churches must not abandon the commandment of love in dealing with people whose choices repel them, secular leaders do an injustice to claim democratic principles and seek gain for those closest or related to them. This is also true of you and I, who stand accused of contributing to such a poisoned climate in 2007, there was no hope of a different ending to the fight for political power.
Not naive
It might seem naive to expect such change from the world, but this is no Pollyanna thinking. The march of history has shown that many of mankind’s bad traits can be unlearned. Think of the mores of the Dark Ages, the ethics of the age of slave trade or the logic the colonialists required. Or consider how progressive ideas about a myriad social problems have, for the most part, won over more and more minds around the world.
Faith, whether in love or justice, can and will help mankind triumph over its worst practices, pointless injustices and compulsion to single out for abuse those that are different.
The Standard Group Plc is a
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