It is 2:42 p.m. and I just returned from a White House tour and lunch with a fellow State Department intern. Morning task: find any official news briefings or embassy cables regarding religion and politics in Africa. Afternoon task: read any unofficial news items or e-mails regarding religion and politics in Africa. Daily ordeal: try not to get bogged down by the humanitarian tragedies that overshadow all discussions of religion and politics.

When I began working at the U.S. State Department, I fastidiously turned on National Public Radio and the BBC each morning, and made dinner each evening to the international sounds of ABC’s Peter Jennings, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, and PBS’s "Le Journal."

First, NPR lost out to the local alternative rock station on my walkman. Then, the mainstream and cable news channels were replaced by "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. Now even PBS and the "West Wing"—one of my favorites—have been co-opted by "Trading Spaces" and sitcom reruns.

I do not purport to suggest that the news or entertainment industries are a fair measurement of popular sentiment—just that the recent intellectual regression I am experiencing in my free time seems to be in equal measure to my daily fill of the insecurity and devastation that face millions around the world. When pushed to pinpoint the source of such conflict-ridden situations, too often I find myself talking about the religious groups on the scenes and their differing ethnic and political agendas.

Is the problem an over-aggressive media that uses gore for commercial gain, or an appetite within the body politic to which the media is merely responding? Or is the reduction of human life to political fodder (that is, for whoever has the biggest weapons) indicative of a broader ideological problem?

Here are some examples from the Africa portfolio: In Sudan, over 2 million Africans, many Christians but also many Muslims, have died from starvation since the beginning of the civil war. As a result of the ongoing scorched-earth policies of the quasi-Muslim, Arab rebel groups in the north, over 700,000 others have been internally displaced. In Uganda, three missionaries were targeted and killed just recently because they were foreign; hundreds of thousands of others have died or fled north from northern Uganda and southern Sudan due to violence by the quasi-Christian Lord’s Resistance Army.

Several reports have surfaced in the past month about children in Angola and Nigeria being subjected to domestic violence and murder for purposes of witchcraft. Over fifty political dissidents were murdered in Nigeria in late March. More than 150 people were killed and as many injured in Cote d’Ivoire around the same time, following the ordered disruption of nonviolent demonstrations in Abidjan. In early April, Rwandans commemorated the ten-year anniversary of the assassination that began the genocide that left an estimated 800,000 dead in 100 days.

Even discussions about the value of human life in the United States often turn into political sparring matches, from recent legislation on abortion to the right of gays and lesbians to marry or be federally protected from discrimination, to which group (or government) was responsible for the Madrid bombings, to what to do about the gruesome images of Americans burned and dragged through the streets of Iraq.

Whatever the cultural or geographical milieu, where are we as a world when the virtue—and virtues—of human life are exchanged like chess pieces? When the laughter of children playing in the street or the celebrations of a new wedding are silenced by the fear of intelligence squads, bomb attacks, night raids, political retribution? When the very relevance of virtues like humility, hospitality, honesty, courage, or justice is predicated on who is speaking, his/her political orientation, or the territorial region at hand?

I am led to consider what role John 10:10 ought to play in guiding our ethics as a religious and political community in light of such current events. Jesus said, "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (KJV). How should the complex and profound Adventist hope in eternal life approach the despair in this life and its structural or systemic causes?

Even as I write this article, I am interrupted by news that the religious violence that erupted in the central Nigerian Plateau state in March has resulted in the deaths of at least 8 pastors and 1,500 Christians, and the destruction of 173 churches.

My hope, with each new news item that appears in my inbox, is that Adventists will lead on the side of justice and love in action, despite the cultural ease with which we—like others within and outside the United States—can distract ourselves and look away. Within that great hope to which all Christians are called, Adventists have a special understanding of good and evil that puts such into perspective without enabling a defeatist or passive attitude of futility, and that must not be forgotten.

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