Philip Gourevitch wrote that “the Rwandans have no need – no room in their corpse-crowded imaginations – for more martyrs. None of us does.”[1] Gourevitch begins so well with this concept that Rwanda has been sated of her blood-lust, but he closes with a deceptive opinion of his own. It is true that when death presents itself unadorned it is rebuked and shunned by the humane world, but when death arrives tactfully dressed in masquerade, society welcomes it to the fete.
The cause of religious discrimination is a costume that is much in vogue right now. Educational officials cluster round it and promote tolerance in public schools because death looks so attractive in it. Tolerance is the name of the spiritual genocide conducted in public schools. The hearts of Bible-believing children are starved or bludgeoned to death as the system wrings Christianity from its strongholds; the hope of non-believing students is an unregretted casualty because it is their own choice not to believe. Occasionally the nihilism and despair of the education produces a sharp student who comprehends death beneath its covering; he murders his fellow students and himself while humane society runs to the scene, expressing horror, to condemn the lack of taste.
We will all have our martyrs. After enough teen-aged blood streaks the halls of schools and death is brashly present, perhaps America will be satisfied like Rwanda.
[1] Philip Gourevitch, We Regret to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (New York: Picador U.S.A., 1998), 353.
violetskye
How sad.