Dear Sir
I am an international student from Colombia who has resided in Scotland for almost four years.
I am obliged to take issue with the article-by Donald Alford, ‘Colombia: growing Christian presence among FARC’, April en.
As a Colombian Christian, I celebrate the proclamation of the gospel everywhere and to anyone, including to members of FARC. I am sincerely thankful for the work of missionaries like Russell Stendal; more particularly, I think there is no question about the debt that the Colombian evangelical church owes to (mostly American) missionaries.
But I have some problems.
1. Contrary to what Mr Alford thinks, FARC’s members are not merely ‘rebels’, insofar as the idea of ‘rebellion’ in this context implies the notion of FARC fighting against those who are in power illegitimately, nevertheless that has not been the case in Colombia.
Despite decades of political unrest, Colombia’s democracy has been one of the most stable in the whole region. Contrary to what happened during the 70s and 80s in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay, etc., Colombia chose democracy instead of a military dictatorship.
But FARC signed up to Marxist-Leninist beliefs whereby the usurpation of power by means of indiscriminate violence is justified. To conceive FARC as freedom fighters against a tyrannical establishment is nothing else than a historical canard. FARC members are terrorists.
2. Equally ahistorical is to maintain that Colombia has endured a ‘civil war’ for 50 years. In general, a civil war assumes the political legitimacy of the parties involved, independently of the moral motivation inherent in each cause. Yet, this cannot be the case in Colombia since FARC does not possess any political status whatsoever that gives them equal validity with the elected government. The absurdity of conceding that FARC is part of a ‘civil war’ in Colombia would be as much as to concede the civil-war-party-status to the terrorists of ETA in Spain or al-Qaeda in the USA or IS in Tunisia.
3. Finally, excuse me for being cynical, but I am not convinced that the church should place its hope for a spiritual change within FARC in Stendal’s estimation of counting ‘10% of FARC guerrillas’ as ‘Christians’, neither am I optimistic about Ivan Marquez’ ‘[new] look in his eyes’. Instead, I would appeal to Jesus’s own words, ‘you will know them by their fruits’. Alas, the fruits reaped from FARC tell us loudly and unequivocally that ‘rebels’ still enjoy producing sour grapes for ‘their’ own people.
Instead of being politically correct, it is much wiser to pray for Colombia’s peace, and for a peace that does not sacrifice justice for political gain.
Yours respectfully,
