CHURCHES IN THE SORCERY DEBATE

The National 20 December 2016

There was a strange letter to the editor from one Tumba Biinem on churches having to become involved in the sorcery debate.

The writer claimed that "plainly the Bible tells us that the sorcerers are agents provocateur of the devil. They are possessed by demons to kill people and cast them to hell".

There are massive leaps in assumptions here. So any person killed in the villages is a sorcerer and the writer supports the killers.

It may well be that the villagers are innocent citizens and the killers are the agents provocateur of the devil.

So villagers have the right to assume that all deaths have to be at the hand of a sorcerer. A person dies of AIDS after several years of dementia and seeing demons in their dreams. That has to be sorcery. Someone has to die.

Asia is being covered by floods after El Nino. So the El Nino drought was the fault of some poor old man in a highlands village. He has to die.

The floods that follow are the result of sorcery. Someone has to die. 

It may be all the result of young villagers stealing land of old men and women who have no family to avenge their killing.