Current Events

Current Events – Body Arts, Beauty or Mutilation?

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Modification of the body, whether permanent or semi-permanent, has been happening for many generations and is done for various reasons, such as ritual, supposed beautification or aesthetics, rites of passage, religious beliefs or to display group membership or affiliation. It is even done to create shock value or simply as self-expression. In general, voluntary changes are modifications, while involuntary changes are considered mutilations.

Young men and women in many African communities have their bodies modified to fulfill custom. Such rites have often required some form of change to the head, limbs or torso. These rites involve practices that range from a mere head and eyebrow shaving to cutting patterns on the face or body using a razor blade, and the chipping, or filing, or removal of incisor teeth. Other forms of modification have included the wearing of wooden plugs designed to stretch the earlobes. This has been a common practice among the Maasai and Turkana people of Kenya, who begin to wear wooden earplugs at 10 years of age, a practice that is considered by many to be a form of child abuse.

Mutilation Used as Punishment

In the early days of America, horse thieves were secured in stocks while they were whipped and their cheeks branded with H T to identify their crime. Slaves, considered property by their masters, were branded for identification from ancient times. Today, in some countries, amputation of the right hand is the punishment for those convicted of theft.

For centuries, the Chinese thought it attractive to bind the feet of the little girls so their feet would not grow bigger than around five inches. This inhumane practice, which has been outlawed since the early 1900s, crippled the women for life.

For many, the skin is a canvas in need of decoration. Some display marks for all to see while some are hidden and only known to the wearer. Modifications such as body piercing and tattooing have become very popular in recent times from simple markings to altering bone structure. Devotees of extreme body modification say that tattoos, piercings, and skin implants are beautiful and that the sometimes-painful procedures used to create them can be emotionally and even spiritually uplifting.

Looking over His creation, God saw that “indeed it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Through Moses He gave explicit instructions to the Israelites that they were not to make any cuttings in their flesh for the dead or place any tattoo marks on themselves (Leviticus 19:28).

Paul wrote, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own” (1 Corinthians 6:19). And again, “I beseech you therefore, brethren by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:1, 2).

The only cutting to be done is the circumcision of the heart, the cutting away of sin from the life. It is a deception of the devil to believe that we can improve on what God has created by painting and mutilating our bodies which we have on loan in this life.

“It is right to love beauty and to desire it; but God desires us to love and to seek first the highest beauty—that which is imperishable. The choicest productions of human skill possess no beauty that can bear comparison with the that beauty of character which in His sight is of “great price.” Education, 249.

Current Events – Pope Frances Continues His Quest to Heal the Deadly Wound

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Pope Francis has asked Rwandan President Paul Kagame for forgiveness for the “sins and failings” of the Catholic Church during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

During a meeting with Kagame Monday at the Vatican, the Pope expressed “solidarity with the victims and with those who continue to suffer the consequences of those tragic events,” according to a statement from the Vatican.

Pope Francis acknowledged that priests, nuns and members of the Catholic church had succumbed to hatred and violence in Rwanda, “betraying their own evangelical mission,” the Vatican said.

Rwanda’s foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo, who accompanied President Kagame on the trip, said the meeting was a positive step forward.

“It allows us to build a stronger base for restoring harmony between Rwandans and the Catholic Church,” she added in a statement released by the presidency. In November, the Catholic Church in Rwanda apologized for its members’ role in the genocide that saw hundreds of thousands of Rwandans killed in 1994.

Rwandan bishops asked for “forgiveness for sins of hatred and disagreement that happened in the country to the point of hating our own countrymen because of their origin,” in a statement read after mass in parishes across the country.

In 1994, Hutu extremists in Rwanda targeted minority ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a three-month killing spree that left an estimated 800,000 people dead.

Hutu attackers burned down churches with hundreds or thousands of Tutsis inside. …

Although the church states it did not send anyone to participate in the killings, it acknowledges that its members were active, apologizing for “Christian leaders who caused divisions among people and planted seeds of hate.”

The church released its apology to coincide with the last day of the Jubilee Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis. …

While several priests have been tried in the UN tribunal and in local courts, Rwandan genocide scholar Tom Ndahiro said that others continue to operate without repercussions.

“There are many more [priests] who have not been held into account,” said Ndahiro.

“None of them have been held responsible by the Catholic Church itself and that is what is missing. You have civil courts that have tried them but the church has its laws and none of them has been held to account by the Catholic Church.”
www.cnn.com/2017/03/20/africa/pope-apology-rwanda-genocide/

Inspired:
“The influence of Rome in the countries that once acknowledged her dominion is still far from being destroyed. And prophecy foretells a restoration of her power. “I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast” (Revelation 13:3). The infliction of the deadly wound points to the downfall of the papacy in 1798. After this, says the prophet, “his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.” Paul states plainly that the “man of sin” will continue until the second advent (2 Thessalonians 2:3–8). To the very close of time he will carry forward the work of deception. … In both the Old and the New World, the papacy will receive homage in the honor paid to the Sunday institution, that rests solely upon the authority of the Roman Church.” The Great Controversy, 578.