I lived in Kenya for seven years, and I never thought it would come to this. While we lived there, Kenya was peaceful—for the most part. During weekends away from work, my wife, our two teenage kids, and I often drove through the Rift Valley towns of Narok, Naivasha, Nakuru, Kisumu, and Eldoret on the way to National Parks and Wildlife refuges. We spent many happy hours in our old Range Rover mere feet away from elephants, lions, giraffes, rhinos, leopards, cheetahs, and countless monkeys, baboons, impalas, cape buffalo—the list could extend on and on.

We once idled slowly into a herd of nearly 200 elephants, turned off the engine, and sat listening to the peaceful behemoths breathe and chew, and care tenderly for their young. One day at dusk, two lion cubs—just playful kittens—chewed the knobs of our car’s tires as their mother observed regally from a few feet away.

On a warm day in western Kenya, Donna and I rode a train from Kisumu to Butere and back. The trip took nearly seven hours, stopping at every little village along the way. We shared seat space with a variety of people from children to grandmas, along with huge sacks of charcoal, bundles of sugar cane, and—yes—live chickens. We were apparently the only non-Africans for miles and miles around. It was a delightful day. Now those peaceful towns are racked by violence, bloodshed, and death.

Back in 1994, as our family had been preparing for the move to Kenya, tribal warfare broke out in the country of Rwanda. The result was the eventual slaughter of 800,000 Hutus and Tutsis. Tribal loyalties often trumped all other values in Rwanda as Catholics killed fellow Catholics, Baptists killed fellow Baptists, and Adventists killed fellow Adventists—simply because one was a Hutu and the other was a Tutsi.

 But it wouldn’t happen in Kenya, I told friends and family who were urging us not to move to Africa. There were many tribes, not just two, and they had lived in peace for decades. It was true at the time, but not now.

The current violence started in late December when two presidential candidates claimed to win one national election. Now, as their sycophants battle it out, a spiraling vortex of violence threatens to engulf the whole country. The numbers change daily, but today the death toll is reported to have topped 1,000. More than 300,000 residents—mostly women and children—have been displaced. Formerly peaceful neighborhoods—probably some through which we used to drive—are smoldering ruins.

From a distance, it seems senseless. How can it matter this much who becomes president? But when passions prevail at close range, anything can happen—and not just in Rwanda or Kenya.

We who are far removed from the violence in Africa should be slow to feel superior. Only 140 years ago many of our ancestors fought in the US Civil War. As we look back, the battles of Appomattox and Antietam and Gettysburg also seem senseless. But the armies of the blue and the gray fought on and on until more than 600,000 lay dead.

Much more recently—in May of 1961 in Anniston, Georgia—four white American men trapped a group of black Americans in a bus, then threw a fire bomb inside. The African Americans were almost entirely nonviolent during the civil rights violence of the ’60s. It was mostly the whites—my tribe—who fomented that racial violence.  Though no one was killed in the Anniston bus incident, the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Alabama records the names of dozens of US citizens who were martyrs in the cause of civil rights. Even today, security is high at the center—tighter than any airport I’ve been in.

Despite the fact that white supremacists continue to threaten the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, times have changed in the United States. Barack Obama, a man born to an American mother and a Kenyan father, now has a realistic chance to be elected the next US president. It would have been unthinkable 40 years ago. The country has made progress.

But we should not be so sure we have overcome all our evil demons. Whether in Narok or New York, Eldoret or El Paso, human beings simply are prone to irrational passion and violence. The apostle Paul wrote, “Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind . . . They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity . . . They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (Romans 1:28-31, NIV). “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know” (Romans 3:15-17, NIV).

 It is true that, having been originally created in the image of God, humans retain a streak of innate goodness. Far too often, however, history and the nightly news show evil prevailing over good. Paul also wrote, concerning events recorded in the Old Testament, “These things . . .  were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall” (1 Corinthians 10:11-12, NIV).

The violence in our world—and this week we must add the Central African country of Chad to the list—should lead us all to greater humility, and a greater sense of our need for God. Paul’s next words to the Corinthians are these: “God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” (verse 13). None of us should think we don’t need the power imbedded in that promise.

Let us pray for the people of Kenya and Chad and other violent spots in the world. And let us not forget to pray for ourselves. Every one of us needs His grace.

B.W.