Revelation, Chapter 15, Verse 4
Who will not fear you, Lord, or
glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All the nations will come and
worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”
We glorify God when we are
righteous as he is righteous who makes the rain fall on both the good and the
evil.
I
know I have gotten away from our book study of Character is Destiny[1] so
with the subject being about RIGHTEOUSNESS we will be examining the character
traits exemplified by Roméo Dallaire who in 1993, was appointed Force Commander
for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), where he
witnessed the country descend into chaos and genocide, leading to the deaths of
more than 800,000 Rwandans. When the rest of the world looked away, he stayed
behind in a manmade evil for the sake of duty and justice. Dallaire was in
charge of a small overwhelmed African peacekeeping force, he could have left but
he refused and witnessed the genocide. He is ashamed he could have not done
more and the reaction of the world that stood by for 100 days doing nothing
allowing the devil to reap carnage, terror and hopelessness. Dallaire was the
one candle in a darkened room of despair created by the collective failure of
mankind’s conscience along with the apathy and deceitfulness of world
governments toward Rowanda’s plight. McCain writes of Dallaire dilemma:
The U.S. government, our allies, and the United Nations went
to extraordinary and ridiculous lengths to avoid using the term, aware that
once genocide was acknowledged, they would have to act. Day after day, long
night after long night, for over three months, more men, women, and children
were added to the rolls of the victims by their hate-crazed persecutors. Romeo
Dallaire soldiered on, saving those he could and agonizing over those he
couldn’t, all the while begging the UN, and the world, to send more troops, to
do something, anything, to help. In his telling, his mission was to keep peace;
peace was destroyed by unimaginable violence, and many thousands died. He
failed. He tried to convince his superiors to send him more men. He failed. He
tried to get the United States and other powerful countries to listen to their
consciences and help. He failed. He tried to persuade the world to stop
genocide. He failed. And while many, many people who had a responsibility to
stop the killings looked the other way and never had a moment of doubt or a
night of troubled sleep, Romeo Dallaire took his failures very, very seriously.
A righteous person, no matter how
blameless, will always take humanity’s failures personally.
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