I had just landed in a “god-forsaken” country where I really did not want to be. The airport terminal, protected by bunkered machine gun posts and sandbags, was not a welcoming sign. My deepening apprehension was replaced by ice cold fear when only two other people disembarked with me, and before we even made our way into the deserted terminal the plane took off. We were alone and there was no turning back from my visit to El Salvador in the middle of a civil war. What on earth had ever possessed me to think this would be a good idea? Even before leaving home I knew about the suffering and bloodshed caused by the military death squads and the FMLN rebels fighting for freedom and their lives against the ruthless military junta ruling the country.
Heavily armed soldiers watched warily from secure sandbagged bunkers as we made our way between two sentries into the darkened, virtually abandoned terminal. This was definitely not a tourist destination. For the past two days I had attempted unsuccessfully to contact the man with whom I had been corresponding for more than a year. I was going to tell him that I couldn’t come, but now I was here and I didn’t know if he would meet me or not and I didn’t know if it would even be possible to get a taxi into the city, and if there were even hotels available.
I was interrogated by a very intimidating immigration officer who seemed certain that I was a foreign agent, and when he found no evidence of guns or ammunition in my luggage he brusquely stamped my passport. There were no other passengers in the dimly lit arrivals hall. My anxiety increased as minutes went by and the only persons I saw were armed to the teeth. I shivered with a sense of ‘god-forsakenness’ until finally I got up the courage to walk out of the locked exit through which there was no return; to see if there was any chance at all that someone might be waiting outside.
To my great relief someone called my name, they were the only people outside the terminal, and were waiting for me – not knowing if I had actually come on the flight or not. The warmth and enthusiasm with which they greeted me was such a contrast to my fear and stress and it no longer felt quite so “god-forsaken.” Yet the underlying tension did not leave drove down dark deserted roads, through frequent military checkpoints, past trucks crammed full of young men in battle gear. I wondered why the people who met me risking their lives, not just in coming to meet me, but by caring for rebel fighters imprisoned in the middle of a civil war.
As we drove into the capital my hosts talked about the men and women they were visiting in prison, people of violence whose lives of anger and revenge were being transformed through the power of love and peace in Jesus Christ. They talked about a growing fellowship of prisoners who were turning their backs on crime and violence in spite of the fact that the prison was as rough and dangerous as the war itself.
I spent a tense and sleepless night listening to the unfamiliar sounds of explosions and gunfire ‑ some real and undoubtedly some the byproduct of my hyper-stressed imagination. The next morning we drove to one of the major prisons located outside the city. Along the broken roads and crumbling buildings life seemed almost normal, yet signs of conflict and destruction were very much in evidence. My heart was pounding as we approached the imposing stone walls of the prison even as I realized, paradoxically, we would probably be far safer on the inside than we were outside.
A
ragged group of prisoners was gathering in the central courtyard as we entered,
some of them were FMLN fighters and others ordinary civilians caught between the
government and rebels, but nearly all of them were members of the Christian
fellowship group. The light in their eyes was a buoyant contrast to the
imposing dreary surroundings. Hope and joy came to life as the men sang a
few songs and as several shared their personal stories.After meeting with the group, I was taken to meet other prisoners who were being held in secure confinement. Passing row upon row of dark foul smelling cells I unexpectedly came face to face with a young prisoner who was leaning against the bars of his solitary cell smoking the nub of a cigarette pressed tightly to his lips. The intensity in his eyes stopped me in my tracks.
"He is far too young to be a terrorist!" I thought to myself. Flashing brown eyes and the sharp features of his face betrayed nothing of the brutality that defined his life. The young prisoner steadily returned my gaze through the small square of steel bars in his cell door. I was about to continue on but was taken aback by his intensity, so I stopped to hear his bitter story. He was an avowed rebel with a cause and was determined to avenge the injustices of the military junta. They were responsible for the desperate poverty of his people. His eyes blazed with passion as he talked about the fight and his hatred for the people responsible for his family's suffering and for his father's "disappearance."
When he finished his story, his face hardened and he spat contemptuously on the floor, cursing. "Of what use am I in here?" he hissed. That fat pig President, he should suffer in here and die like a starving rat. My comrades need me in the streets, not in this ‘god-forsaken’ pit where nobody cares if I live or die.
"But God cares," I responded almost automatically.
The prisoner’s knuckles whitened as he clenched the iron bars between us. "Why does God let evil men torment and exploit our people?” he retorted. His fevered eyes smoldered with untold pain and through his gritted teeth he hissed, “Your God is not here with us, why is he always with the rich and powerful?!"
Numbly I looked back at him, unable to respond as he glared, his question ricocheting off the big stone walls. What answer could I give? Common, empty platitudes careened uselessly through my mind and the reeking prison air burned my eyes and throat. I had to break his gaze. I felt there was nothing I could say that would be meaningful to him, but yet I couldn't just turn and walk away. As I stood there the realization came to me that we might be the only signs of God’s presence and love in the midst of his ‘god-forsakenness.’
"Jesus knows exactly what you are experiencing," I said, "He was once a prisoner – betrayed by a person he trusted, falsely accused, arrested, completely abandoned, imprisoned, tortured – and a victim of total injustice – feeling ‘god-forsaken’ too.” “But God was with Him, and He did not fight back,” I continued. “You know that violence does not stop violence, it only causes more hatred and more suffering; but Jesus did something more courageous than you can imagine – he forgave His enemies, and He overcame their hatred and their evil with love – and He is here with you.”
The fighter listened impassively as I spoke to him about Jesus. To him God had always seemed remote and Jesus was confined in a world of priests and churches, and old ladies. Although I knew my words were true, they felt so empty and meaningless in the presence of the young man’s anguished story. The idea that Jesus actually cares about people in their everyday suffering and is present with them was something he had never realized. It was difficult for him to connect with this for he was overwhelmed by the experiences of injustice and exploitation, of ‘god-forsakenness’, and his family was suffering in excruciating poverty, a degradation from which there seemed to be no escape.
I shook his hand through the narrow bars and we continued walking through the prison, stopping here and there to chat with other inmates. As I watched my new friends it seemed that they were palpably the presence of Jesus Christ in one of the most ‘god-forsaken’ situations I’d ever experienced. In the middle of a civil war in a ‘god-forsaken’ prison roiling with the bitter ‘god-forsakenness’ of rebels behind bars, a few courageous followers of Jesus were bearing witness to the message and the reality of God’s presence in the midst of darkness and destruction. The freedom fighters were not really forsaken or forgotten by God who knows the suffering of their families and the tyranny; and who sent these courageous people to show and tell them so.
My day in that dreadful prison is one of many through which I have increasingly come to see the presence of God in and through courageous followers of Jesus who care for the most unlovable and unlikely people in the world. Their faith is not a religion, ideology, church membership, or even the recitation of a doctrinal creed. Their faith is literally a way of life - the realization of God’s presence in the “pit” of life – lived out in the most ‘god-forsaken’ places and circumstances – making the invisible presence and love of God visible and palpably real.
To be a follower of Jesus is to follow Him into the ‘god-forsaken’ dark, depressing, deadening places of human experience to proclaim and show that God is present - loving and caring for all who are oppressed and imprisoned whether by tyranny or abuse or in addictions, homelessness, poverty, loneliness, illness, anguish, or any other evil.
THE
CORACLE is published weekly as a reflection on faith and life.
It is available free by subscription. The name CORACLE - refers to a
small leather boat that was typically used by Celtic monks during the 8th and
9th Centuries. One of the most famous was St. Brendan the Navigator who
undertook a missionary voyage of faith. Without navigational maps and
instruments he trusted that by waves and wind and current, God would bring him
to the place and places where he was meant to be. Yet far from being
fatalistic, his voyage was the deeply spiritual account of a man’s journey in
surrendering to the will of God and trusting God to guide and protect him from
danger and disaster. Brendan’s voyage became famous as an ideal for the
Celtic monks of Ireland who dared to venture into unknown and wild places in
order to spread the gospel. Setting sail in their fragile coracles was at
once a courageous act of faith and a profound expression of their passion to
follow Jesus Christ no matter where the journey would take them or what the
journey would entail.