While my overseas travels are nothing more than a few weeks out of my life, I’ve heard and seen a lot more through them than I have in the rest of my mundane life here. When I was 18, I traveled to Uganda on a service mission trip where I was installing solar-powered lighting systems in rural churches, schools, and medical clinics where people needed more than just burning oil to see. Uganda, being on the equator, has 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. And while the stars are beautiful in the remote areas where no unnatural light blocks our view of it, it doesn’t help when you have to deliver a baby in the dark. I’ve heard that the oil lanterns they use actually reduce the lifespan of the children there when they are born.
But I found the entire country to be beautiful and at the same time a little terrifying to see the level of poverty they suffer from. There is no reason for it as their entire nation could easily produce enough to contend with several other nations. But that region of the world has been plagued by wars and terrible warlords for decades now, the current government stagnates their growth as a nation, and they have a very serious problem with Islamic thugs encroaching in on their nation. And not just this past weekend attack in Kampala, their capital city, but a serious problem where the Saudis are sending lots of money down there to win over converts. Sometimes, just telling people that all you need is Jesus is never quite enough.
More than the small terrors I saw while I was there, was the memories of greater terrors from decades past. The infamous dictator Idi Amin still lives on in the stories recounted by the elderly, many of whom barely escaped that monster’s atrocities. But sometimes these stories have a hint of hope in them, even when they are always tragic. I recall the retired American Bishop who I traveled told my group the story of the Archbishop Janani Luwurm and how he was brutally murdered by Idi Amin.
He told us of how the Anglican Church in Uganda was one of the few groups who opposed Idi Amin’s brutal treatment of the Ugandan people. They did not seek to overthrow the man, but they sought to quell the madman’s thirst for blood. They hid people who had become targets of Amin’s bloodlust and they openly protested the treatment of their fellow countryman. But when the Archbishop sent a letter of protest to Amin, he probably had sealed his doom in this life.
Idi Amin gathered together all the bishops of the Anglican Church along with many of his top soldiers and had the Archbishop paraded out in front of them. Then, he had massive amounts of arms brought out before the soldiers and told them that the Archbishop was planning on overthrowing Amin. He asked them what they should do with their traitor and the soldiers demanded his death.
He was taken away by Amin’s men to a secret location. Idi Amin was present while the guards beat Archbishop Janani Luwurm. He did not resist. When they stopped, in order to hear a confession I suppose, he instead prayed to God. He prayed for his country, his people, the guards, and lastly he prayed for Idi Amin. No, he did not pray for curses, but for blessings. Idi Amin, however, was so enraged by this that he left the room and came back shortly after with his service pistol. He proceeded to shoot Archbishop Janani Luwurm.
The rest of the story was pretty mundane. Amin and his men made the Archbishop’s death look like a car crash, although it was obvious that he was executed because when his body was released to Luwurm’s family, it was riddled with bullets. Until his death in 2003, Idi Amin denied ever having shot Archbishop Luwurm. I suspect he did so because he may have harbored some regret for killing a man pleading with God to bless him. But I will probably never know the full truth in these matters.
What was so amazing about this story, which the American Bishop related to me, was that when he was told the story, the Ugandan Bishop told with great pride and a smile on his face. He concluded by saying that the ruthless dictator, for all his power, wealth, and cunning, did not know the story. Ultimately, he did not understand that Archbishop Luwurm knew all that he was doing and that he was obeying a higher authority and inspired by the story of Jesus. He sought not to overthrow the murderous thug, but to reach out to him and hopefully bring Jesus into his life. No, he didn’t succeed, but a Christian’s calling is not one of success, but attempts.
That is the true spirit of martyrdom: not to die in the service of Jesus, but to merely witness to others without regard for the consequences that almost are always heaped upon us as a result.