Shooting Dogs

In the midst of being tossed about  in the sea of life’s sorrows here (see post below) we do still have our dear interns, and one of the ways we generate awareness and discussion of African issues is to watch a few movies after team meeting on Thursday nights.  One of the best:  Shooting Dogs (2005), set during the first tragic days of the Rwandan genocide in April 1994.  This movie got little play or attention compared to Hotel Rwanda, but it is a hundred times better.  Grittily real but grappling with redemption, it follows the true story of 2,500 Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees who sought protection from the UN in a Catholic school compound.  It was produced by BBC Films.  The frame story is of a British career missionary priest and a young teacher year-long volunteer.   This movie is not for the weak of heart:  the violence of genocide is not glossed over.  But it asks very clearly:  where is God in the midst of this tragedy?  How should missionaries, powerless citizens, or foreign soldiers respond to flagrant injustice?  

As painful as the movie is, I’ve watched it several times, and each time I find it profoundly moving.  Many reasons:   it is based on actual events that occurred only a few hundred miles from our home, while we were living here, and contains many scenes that are familiar, from the dusty roads and chattering children to the agonizing scenes of evacuation and survivor guilt.  And because many of the actors and producers are actual witnesses and survivors.  But mostly because it provides a modern-day picture of the Gospel.  The Christ-likeness of the priest would be remarkable even in a Christian film, let alone a BBC secular production.  I won’t give too much away, but in this viewing what really stuck with me was the final scene.  He is driving a truck full of hidden Tutsi children through the dark streets of Kigali and meets a road block manned by a former school contact whom he knows.  As the man with the gun accosts him, he says “The amazing thing, Julius, is that I feel nothing but love for you.”  The first time I saw this I found that line unbelievable and corny.  But since it is witnessed by a survivor, it is probably true.  This time I saw it with hope.  That in the most extreme moment, a person who has chosen a cross-path, can actually be supernaturally filled with enemy-love (hesed) even as Jesus was.  

Our trials here represent cup-sized empty pots in comparison to the life-and-death whole-scale societal implosion of 1994 Rwanda.  But if God was present in the midst of that suffering, surely He is able to meet us in ours.  Because in the end, the reason the priest stays is that he finds the desperation of the tragedy makes God more real than ever.   This is the longing of the songs of lament:  relief, yes, but more deeply to meet God in the sorrow.  

(NOTE: a comment under this post by an informed reader says that this movie was marketed in the USA under a different title: 

Beyond The Gates (2005)).