Kagame has always denied playing any part in the shoot-down
and he has counter-charged France with complicity in the genocide through
aiding the Hutu government and providing training and assistance to those who
committed the genocide. France had been backing the Hutu government and had
opposed Kagame as a tool of American imperialism.
He has a point concerning France. It's a chapter Paris does
not want to revisit, all the more as they are presently trying to charge
Putin's Russia with war crimes in Syria. It's all something of a game. Every
side is dripping with blood.
While the empires played chess, hundreds of thousands would
die. It happened in 1994 and it's happening today in many places.
Whether Kagame triggered the events or not, he's a man known
for playing his part in various conspiracies and has certainly been connected
to a great deal of violence. It reminded me of a mysterious death in South
Africa that took place a couple of years ago. But when you understand the
background of who Kagame is, it's even more troubling.
Paul Kagame is touted and celebrated among the Christian
Right in the United States. An ally of American Evangelicalism he has partnered
with figures like Rick Warren as he seeks to sacralise his society and proclaim
it 'Christian'. Influenced by Dominion Theology, he has (it would seem) also
learned to apply its ethics. Its consequences in a place like Africa can be
somewhat harsh.
Dominion Theology now the default in American Evangelicalism
identifies the Kingdom of God with civilisation and culture and thus it is
essential for the Church to attain and maintain power. Building on a distorted
and non-Christocentric reading of the Old Testament this theology and its
ethics essentially cast aside much of what the New Testament teaches.
Its critics are berated as 'Sunday only' Christians who
refuse to apply their faith seven days a week and to view their work and daily
lives as holy vocations. This is a straw-man argument and a falsehood. Biblical
rejections of Dominionism are rooted in an understanding that Scriptural
Vocation is our calling to be Christians and that everything else, our
employment, money etc... are all of secondary concern. They are means not ends.
It is Dominionism through its modification of the doctrine of
Vocation that effectively creates 'Sunday only' Christians, or in many cases
'No Sunday' Christians... in other words, baptised worldlings.
By embracing this erroneous theology Kagame can ignore the
injunctions of Romans 12 and cloaking his violence under the sanction of Romans
13 he can take vengeance on his enemies. In fact his enemies become evildoers,
whether they are or not. He can set aside his Christianity because his
political office, his Vocation takes
precedent and now as a state office bearer, vengeance is not only permitted but
can be obligatory. That's Sunday-only Christianity if it can be called even
that.
No one is going to be able to directly peg the 2014 murder of
dissident Col. Karegeya on Kagame. The hard evidence is not going to be found
and yet virtually everyone knows he was taken out by the Rwandan state. Kagame
seems to feel no shame about this... about the fact that (by all appearances
and estimates) he is a murderer.
"You can't betray Rwanda and not get punished for it,"
he told a prayer meeting on 12 January. "Anyone, even those still alive,
will reap the consequences. Anyone. It is a matter of time."
But of course it's worse. Rwanda has been supporting the M23
militias in the Congo for many years in what is essentially a leftover conflict
from the Rwandan Civil War. The Kivu Conflict is but one facet of the fighting
in Congo. M23, backed by a 'Christian' leader of a 'Christian' country is
supporting fighters accused of rape, murder, recruiting child soldiers and
other atrocities.
Kagame's record is dark and brutal but he's an important ally
of the United States and for many years the American Evangelical community has
helped to foster these ties. France has its own ambitions for Africa and continues
to play spoiler to American imperialism and its ongoing proxy war with Chinese
interests.
How many Christians suffer even now, caught in the middle of
these machinations? And how many have been caught up in these lies and seeking
power and 'divine blessing' have turned to a false theology that rewards power
and seeks, not the Kingdom of Heaven but worldly dominion. It does not lay up
treasures in heaven but instead offers devotion to a pseudo-Christian
manifestation of the Beast.
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