Almost 2 years ago now, Gordon-Conwell Seminary near Boston held a Genocide Awareness Week. My friend Stephanie was in charge, and told me that I should consider writing a song about genocide to perform during one of the sessions.
Write a song about genocide? Hmmmm.... Simple enough, right? Ummm, no. It's much easier to write a song about love or babies or weddings or being lonely... but genocide? Very intimidating.
But I did. And it just flowed out as I thought about the first murder - Cain's murder of his brother Abel in Genesis 4. This song is told from the perspective of the dirt (hence the first line: "your blood is in my mouth"), which is kind of a strange perspective to take, but it works. After that first murder, Abel's blood cried out to God from the dirt. God heard that cry. What Cain did was wrong and twisted and defied the intentions of God the Creator and the beauty and order of his creation.
Now think about this... how much blood has been spilled and soaked up by the dirt since then? Genocide is Cain and Abel's murder manifested on a much larger scale, but the same twisted and sinister evil is at its root.
Many people who speak about social justice stop here and say "the people behind genocide and murder are evil and bad and the oppressed victims of these heinous crimes are innocent." While this statement is true on a human level, I think that God has a bolder and bigger plan. He hates genocide and murder, yes. There is great hope for the oppressed, for the victim, for the widow, for the orphan, for the poor and downtrodden, for Abel. But God also has the ability to redeem even the Cains of this world and the to rescue us from the twistedness inside of us... the twistedness that make even the best of us capable of what he did. The latter half of this song speaks to this, and it's definitely the heart of the song.
Any thoughts? Do you agree? I'm still working this out in my mind and my heart, so I welcome any comments!
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