zim at the polls

Zimbabwe is "voting" today.

In a video clip on the BBC, Robert Mugabe, Zim's dictator and sole presidential candidate, talks to journalists after casting his ballot. A reporter asks, "How are you feeling today...?"

"Very fit. Very fit. Very optimistic. Upbeat. And hungry."

Hungry?

Hungry!?

Hungry!!!

This is one of the most backwards statements in history.

A dictator who oppresses his own people in every area of their lives, leaving (not leading) a starving nation to fend for themselves, while he sits in a comfortable castle awaiting death, daily becoming one of the richest people on the continent, casts his vote for his own rigged election, itself fueled by violence and murder and deception, and essentially shouts to the world, "I'm hungry."

Hungry for what?

Hungry for more.

More food.

More money.

More power.

More violence.

More castles.

More mirrors.

More of everything, for him, and anyone else willing to put the deaf-and-blind comfort of a few above the cries and suffering of the multitude.

But it's simply more evil.

And we must pray against evil, even "overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:21) And at times, it seems impossible, futile. "But everything is possible for him who believes," Jesus says in Mark 9:23.

The crafty look on Bob's face in the interview reminds me of the story of The Rich Man and Lazarus from Luke 16:19-31, where the rich man looks past Lazarus, a beggar outside his kingdom who longed to "eat what fell from the rich man's table."

They both die, the rich man parked in Hell, Lazarus in Heaven. From Hell, the rich man catches a vision of Lazarus, and says:

"Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire."

Abraham replies that it would be impossible to pass from one state to the next, inferring that turning off the cries of this earth, with its temporary self-indulgence, will reap eternal consequences.