Our final week has come and gone and the past few days have produced ample opportunities to reminisce together over all the steep inclines, glorious summits, trick trails and  unexpected turns that our time in Armenia has provided. However, as J.R.R. Tolkien aptly put it; “The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the road has gone, and I must follow, if I can’. For me, my immediate road leads now to a small Castle in Southern Germany where I will study Biblical Christian Worldview and it’s application for the next several months.  Along the way, however, I have planned a few exciting detours. I will be spending a few days in Norway recovering from outreach and then two weeks planning ministry and visiting co-workers in Kiev, Ukraine. More as it comes…

“Still believe in Total Depravity?”

This sarcastic remark was the closest any of us dared tread towards humor after exiting the Armenian Genocide Museum late tuesday afternoon. Though unbeknownst to many readers the Armenian Holocaust was so horrendous that the term ‘genocide’ was first coined to describe it. The Armenians themselves simply call it “the Great Crime”. This ethnic massacre took place during and after the first world war in what was then the Ottoman Empire (Now Turkey) during the years 1915-1918. Approximately one to one and a half million Armenians were systematically slaughtered by force, deportation and starvation during this time.

We were exposed to numerous first hand accounts during our short time at the museum. A Danish missionary in the Ottoman Empire wrote this on the 26th of June, 1915:

“It was proclaimed from all mosques today that all Armenians are to be sent into exile. They are to be given four days in which to dispose of all their possessions, and be ready for the journey to an unknown destination for an indefinite period. It is said that they will be sent down to the desert south of Ourfa. If this is true, then it is obvious that the whole meaning behind this movement of the Armenian people is their extermination.”

The pictures of these events were difficult to even look at. I have spared you portraits of skeleton children, fields of human skulls, men hanging – necks broken.

With these images burned into my memory,  how the pagan or modern humanist can proclaim the essential goodness of mankind is beside me…

Leaving the museum I was struck by the naivety we often possess in the West.  We look out at the world with rose colored glasses and assume that our thriving global economy, relative world peace, gender equality, and the racial freedom’s we experience are the norm and not a historical exception. The Cold war ended only two decades ago, our last World War ended six decades ago, the Armenian genocide took place not even a hundred years ago – have we forgotten? When personal affluence and success are on the rise it is far too easy to forget the true backdrop of our lives, the meta-narrative which all of our stories play a part. The Bible records God’s redemptive plan to save humanity from sin. Real sin. Real sinners.

Sin like the Armenian Genocide can remind us of this. Sin is still the issue – and this is a enemy that only the cross can defeat. No religion, no moralizing, no law-making has the ability to change the heart of a man. Only the gospel can do that. That is what makes it such incredible, ‘too-good-to-be-true’ news.

May the ‘Great Crime’ call us back to that story. May it remind us that despite our luxury cars and high definition televisions we have not attained the New Jerusalem. That is not yet our story. We are still living in Act 3. Our story, and God’s story of reconciling mankind to himself goes on. We have been solemnly commissioned as messengers and agents of that reconciliation. Lets do our part well.