Judgmental Innocence

I want today to confront our biases, especially because we are so quick to say one should not judge when we are performing worse judgment. And I will look at two high voltage incidents that are trending in Kenya these few days; the insulting Chinese and the murdered student.

Let us start with the Chinese. Do we really have the whole story? Is that small clip all we are using to dump a young man so badly?

I do not support his dirty language. He is clearly guilty. In fact I am sure he is regretting ever going that direction.

But let me ask a small question. Did he start insulting us from thin air? Was he deranged to speak such insults without caring who heard them, and in a foreign land? Was that the way he always talked about Kenya and Kenyans?

I suspect he was severely provoked, either there or elsewhere to be angry enough to pour his heart in such a manner.

As usual let me give an example.

Suppose we are in a house and disagree. Then I insult you so badly that your fuse blows.

Then, just as you are lifting up your fist to knock me a neighbor walks in, getting you just as you are knocking me to the floor, senseless. He then picks me and rushes me to the hospital and the hospital says that they must have a police report from the kind of injuries I have sustained. What do you think he will report? Can you ever defend yourself?

Remember a world cup where Zidane was told something and head butted the provoker, getting a red card and soiling his clean playing record in his last game of his career? Everybody knew that he had been provoked badly, but there was no witness to prove it. What was evident was the head butt.

It is possible that his Chinese guy is a victim of such a scheme. But we will never know as we were given the only evidence the keyboard battalion knows how to use.

How different is he from Kenyans who condemn whole communities? They are all thieves, they are all sex maniacs, they kill at no provocation, etc.

Of course the case of the student is even more blatant in its usage of the facts. And the facts we already have have muddied the narrative almost to an irreparable extent.

We were made to believe that the death was of a young and innocent university girl who was killed for wanting to expose a ‘sponsor’ whose child she carried. Nobody wanted to hear any questions as to what a small girl was doing in bed with her father (we are Africans, meaning anybody my father’s age is treated as my father). Nobody wanted to deal with the sexual sin.

Then it was revealed that she was living high yet she could not even pay her fees. And of course it was from the same sponsor.

Then we were told that she not only was moving with her father, she was also moving with his own son, something that brought some issues with the sponsor.

A journalist comes into the picture with a blurred story, leading to some suspecting that he is the one who betrayed her trust and led to her murder.

Finally we get to know that she actually had been a married mother of two.

Let us start the story from behind.

She was a married woman who deserted her marital bed for the thrills of an expensive life funded by a rich politician, meaning she was just an expensive harlot, hate me if you will.

The fact that she was not content with her old man (sponsor) to have a relationship with his son is telling, and I will not discuss it here.

Could there have been other sponsors in the story? Could there have been other hot blooded young men in the mix? Could there have been other men seeking her expensive services, some she may have rejected, probably insulting them in the process?

How was her husband feeling seeing or knowing that the wife he married is making a fool of herself with rich old men? What about their families? What kind of reproach was she bringing to them? What about the family of the sponsor? How does it feel knowing that a father and son are sharing the same woman?

The one who killed her is a murderer. But that will never make her a saint.

She was a home wrecker and harlot and a shame to the whole community. Defending her because she was killed is excusing her sin, making you an accomplice.

Do you remember the sins that will send people to hell in Revelation? The first one is cowardice (fear) and the last is lying. Reporting or responding to a story in a way that does not offend is both.

And I am not talking about shaming anyone, though I have not heard anyone feeling guilty of shaming the Chinese. Why are we scared of speaking the truth about the dead? Why are we not feeling any remorse condemning the living, even calling for his arrest even before the police have done their investigations? Yet this story has enough twists and turns to make a huge investigative novel. It is possible that many will have to swallow their words once the truth comes out. It is only that I have never seen keyboard warriors express remorse.

Let me finish with the Bible as usual

And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the LORD? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the LORD. (2Chonicles 19:2)

You realize that Jehoshaphat was the king who sent his praise team ahead of the army to war. He therefore had a real relationship with God. Why is God angry with him?

Do you realize that in this incident he was helping his brother out of oppression? He was simply helping in sorting out an outstanding issue a fellow king, who was also an in law, needed to address.

He was not a warmonger.

How then does helping out a brother offend God?

You see, when you join yourself to God, He dictates your whole life, even your friends and enemies. Joining yourself to someone not as sold out to God therefore offends Him. Remember 2 Corinthians 6: 14? Fighting for people and issues not related to His revelation is therefore sin. Incidentally that is what most believers have turned out to being the name of social media justice.

Why did the kidnappers allow the journalist to escape? And do not feed me the lie that he jumped out of a speeding saloon car yet he was sandwiched to the tarmac and was able to later outrun them to a homestead. Either he talked them into letting him go, a thing they would have done anyway, or they played with his mind so that he thought he had escaped.

You can’t jump out of a car at 40 kph. Even the hair-raising heroics touts do are below 20 kph, and from a standing position. And a car with the intention of crime will not be driven slowly. They let her companion go because he was not part of the equation.

Why did they rape her and leave the evidence of the same at the scene? Why did they stab the baby in her womb? It would have died after the death of the mother anyway. Why did they not make her body disappear, especially as they had a vehicle?

I suspect that woman’s death was a ritual killing. And it fits with the specifics of the facts already released, especially the fact that she was moving with a father and son, an abomination in any community I know of, and also the Bible.

It is possible her killing was a cultural cleansing of the abomination her conduct had caused. And that is why very few in that community want to make much noise. Her killers may be viewed as cleansers of such abomination. And we know that the community is awash with many cultural affairs. Remember a case about a snake?

Do not be surprised if this case disappears just like that if what I suspect turns out in the investigations. There is a very recent case like that which has also gone quiet. You cannot take culture to the courts.

Believers, please stick to your lanes. Stick to what God is telling you and doing for you.

There are many cases in the Bible like Jehoshaphat’s; people who were punished for showing more mercy than God.

King Saul lost his kingdom because his hands became weak when a king and fat animals needed to be killed. Ahab was killed because he negotiated with a king God wanted dead.