Over coffee with some of our greatest friends in Uganda tonight, we heard the horrific tale of a young lady currently being rescued from a children’s prison camp. Without disclosing the gruesome specifics of her story, I will report that this 13 year old, HIV infected girl was placed by her surrogate mother into the care of a witchdoctor operating a shrine some few hours from their family home. During her years at this place of demon worship, the male witch and his female assistants would regularly carry out ritual sacrifice with human babies as their victims. Our dinner table conversation didn’t go into the exact methodology of the slayings, but our friend indicated that the girl had described the primitive destruction of these precious lives in terrible detail. At one point, she was even forced at knife point to drink a full cup of human blood. Her faith in God was strong and after witnessing of the forgiveness of Jesus to one of the butchers, some light dawned in the woman’s heart and they escaped together to Kampala city, with the girl eventually landing in the children’s prison for lack of a better place to accommodate the destitute orphan.
This reality is unfathomable to me – that in the year 2010 in a rapidly developing nation like Uganda, human sacrifice is still widely practiced throughout the nation with very little protest from the general populace, let alone from the 80% that claim to be some form of “Christian.” Other than occasional mentions in the local news, there is no outcry for the closing of such shrines, of making the practice of “traditional healers” illegal, or even for neighbors or the otherwise informed to report such wickedness to civil authorities.
But as we considered this atrocity, a similar situation came to the forefront of our conversation – a parallel brutality that is widely accepted throughout many “modern” cultures throughout the world. This sterile killer’s softened terms (“termination of pregnancy”) have helped murder become a socially acceptable “mother’s choice,” but the practice is no less brutal or wicked than human sacrifice on the dark continent of Africa.
Whenever my wife and I are about to deliver a newborn baby, I get crazy about this subject. To even consider the snuffing out of a precious human life, whether from inside the womb or without is an evil that only the completely deceived or demonically possessed could attempt. I know many people around the world who have carried out abortions, terminating the life growing inside their bodies, either from convenience or to cover up their unrestrained infidelity. In every case I’ve personally known, the destruction of life produces internal sorrow and regret that far outweighs the shame of producing an illegitimate baby or the inevitable interruption of child-nurture.
As I pondered the merciless massacre of Ugandan babies at the hands of demon-crazed, money-hungry witches, I couldn’t help but think of an American t-shirt slogan from one of my favorite advocacy-for-life sites: “Would it bother us more if they used guns?” cries the graphic, while displaying a handgun and the group’s website address. What of using machetes, as they do in Uganda? I think it should bother us a lot.
“Open your mouth for the speechless, in the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.” – Proverbs 31:8-9.