My husband is a genocide researcher. He looks back in history at the times when one people group hoped to eliminate another people group through bloodshed, famine, or other forms of harm.

Often the stories of violence are deeply interwoven, passed down through the generations. In Ireland, the deep hatred of Protestants and Catholics was part of the fabric of injustice woven through the disparity of wealth and poverty, opulence and starvation, continued through injustice, domination, and cruelty. 

In America, we sold children. We can visit towns that auctioned babies and infants, mothers, and fathers. Families torn asunder. A young 5-year-old boy was sold for $1.50 on an auction block, countless men, women, and children sold. The majority of slaves disallowed education, disallowed marriage outside the ownership’s agreements, disallowed from stopping their children to be sold from their care. Meanwhile, treatises espoused and promoted from church pulpits promoted doctrine that people of color were not fully human and didn’t possess a human soul. 

As I read the historical accounts, the journals and testimonies of “God fearing” people in their hatred of others they deem to be cattle, savage, beasts, or evil—what suffering! What heartbreak!

What to do? Where is the hope? 

Dad believed one of the greatest ways to overcome evil was through its exposure to the light of love and forgiveness. He believed we heal when we root out what is hidden and bring it forward in a spirit of confession. He believed in telling stories and honoring the suffering of the past. 

Love as witness. Love as crying together. Love as a voice for the voiceless. Love as walking together through the trauma of the past finding new paths of hope, healing, and freedom. 

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.

For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

– Galatians 6:7-10