The City of God - a morning meditation on Revelation 21 by Hannelore Schmid

We are praying this week for Brazil, its peoples, its churches, its political leaders. When I think of Brazil, two aspects come to my mind. The first one is the question of land: the unjust land distribution, the movement of the landless, the search for the “Land without evil” of its indigenous peoples as Simei explained it to us last Monday morning.

The other aspect are the cities and the ever increasing violence in those cities.
I don’t know whether you are going to the movies from time to time. “City of God” or “Ciudade do Deus” is a Brazilian film which was released in 2002. It describes the life and development over three decades of various kids who grow up in Rio de Janeiro in a favela which is called “City of God”. The film is the depiction of a world where people have been forgotten for too long by the Brazilian ruling classes; a world where the state does not provide proper health or education services. In fact, the only items it provides freely are bullets. Many of these deaths in Brazil’s urban areas are the result of confrontation between drug gangs, or between dealers and the police. According to UN guidelines, a country with over 25,000 assassinations per year is considered to be in a state of war - and in the year when this film was made, Brazil registered well over 40,000 assassinations.

What the film “City of God” achieves is the possibility to understand how the country got to this chaos. Rarely has a film created such heated debate in Brazil. The country's current leader, Luiz Inacio da Silva, at the time the socialist presidential candidate, urged the then president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, to see “City of God” in order to understand the extent of the urban tragedy in Brazil. Today, maybe one should invite Lula to see the film again … as apparently nothing has changed for the better under his reign.

Heidi Cerneka who works with female prisoners in the city of Sao Paulo writes:
“Laws against torture, domestic violence and political impunity must be applied. As a model of citizenship, the police forces, both military and civil, must be held accountable and corruption and violence within the police forces must be eradicated. Clearly, more training, more ongoing support and continuing education are a means to this end. Only then, will they earn the trust of the general population. Finally, making the education and formation of today's children a first priority will open the possibility of a different future for them ... of a different future for all of society.”

Copyright (c) Hannelore Schmid/WCC