June 4th, 2021: There is no word to describe how I feel...

 

My heart sank when I read about the news about the unmarked graves of 215 children from the Indian Residential School in Kamloops, BC. According to the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Report, there were about 4100 children deaths. Some indigenous people say the number is much higher, about 6000. Maybe more.

For some of you who are new to this tragedy in our Canadian history, here is an excerpt from the Globe and Mail about Residential Schools in Canada.

"From the 1870s to the 1990s, residential schools were part of a systematic federal policy to assimilate Indigenous children into European culture, based on racist assumptions that their own cultures were inferior. Children were separated from their parents and lived in poorly funded schools where federal- or church-run staffs punished them for speaking their own languages. Physical and sexual abuse, malnutrition, and disease were common. There were 138 residential schools reviewed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the last of which closed in Saskatchewan in 1996."

As a Christian pastor, I don't think there is much we can say except that we committed a horrid moral error by denying God's beauty in other people and their ways of life. We assumed that we were more superior to others. That ignorance lead us to behave less than what God had intended for us. Church leadership should have the courage and the integrity to own that wicked chapter of our history. 

We also know that the spread of the Gospel and the expansion of colonialism was not a good mix. This is a needed lesson for us to learn. As much as I support and pray for Christians who want to be in politics, I am seriously apprehensive about the entanglement between politics and the political position of the church. No political theory or movement will define my faith. My faith is the outcome of daily trying to understand the heart of God in dealing with various challenges of our time.

I know without a doubt that it broke God's heart when these indigenous children were hurt and killed. I could not write about this earlier because I was too angry and ashamed of what people did in the name of God and the superiority of their race.

To my indigenous friends, I am sorry for your pain because of this discovery. May we together learn how to be reconciled with God and with one another. The suffering that stemmed from this evil act doesn't stop with one generation. It has more than one generational impact on many people.

Ecclesiastes 12: 14

"For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil."