The world often seems a sadly violent and harsh place. Week after week reports of atrocities or injustices or tragedies reach us, and we feel helpless to avert the next misfortune. It can almost seem that a great and inevitable sweep of heartless history plays out before us, as on a big screen, and we are destined to simply watch. Or are we?
Some time ago Philip Yancey in his book “What Good is God?” told the story of what happened in Ukraine in 2004 that challenges our assumptions of helplessness in the face of grave problems. In that year Victor Yushchenko ran for the presidency of Ukraine as an independent candidate. He faced bitter opposition from the ruling party’s candidate who was able to manipulate the media as well as engineer electoral fraud. Political opponents may even have been behind an assassination attempt on Yushchenko’s life. Not long before the election, Yushchenko was poisoned with a deadly component of Agent Orange. Though disfigured and ill, he remained in the presidential race.
On the day of the election, Yushchenko initially appeared to be in the lead. Yet after vote tampering, it was announced that he had actually lost. On the national broadcast of the state-run television station that evening, the reporter confidently said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we announce that the challenger Victor Yushchenko has been decisively defeated.”
But as that evening’s news was being broadcast, within a small box in the lower right hand corner of the big screen, Natalia Dmitruk was offering a simultaneous sign language translation of the broadcast for the deaf community. Rather than translate an announcement she knew to be false, Dmitruk did an amazingly brave thing. She signed these words, “I’m addressing all the deaf citizens of Ukraine. They are lying and I’m ashamed to translate those lies. Yushchenko is our president.”
The deaf citizens of Ukraine quickly spread the word and within weeks a million people wearing orange converged on Kiev in what would be known as the Orange Revolution. They demanded and ultimately were granted a new and fair election in which Victor Yushchenko emerged as president.
The story of Dmitruk’s influence on her world is an instructive one. Although we may feel overwhelmed by the major events and the powerful trends that we face, we are not actually helpless. The big screen of news casts and debates and reported events sweeps on. But these sources don’t report the only messages worth hearing. As if in a small box in the corner of that media blitz, our communities of faith often have an uplifting idea, or a corrective vision or a challenging word to offer. They provide a quiet translation of faith’s perspective to an audience that otherwise hears almost entirely bad news.
So yes, watch the world spin on and on, its events emblazoned across the big screen. But watch, too, for the efforts to translate the deeper, truer meaning of it all.
Maybe, in fact, each of us is capable of bearing a little good news to our corner of the world.
