On Thursday, October 29th a young Tunisian man with a knife attacked worshippers in a French church killing three people. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)
From a Pioneers Worker in Nice, France
Along with our teammates, my wife and I serve at a ministry café each Thursday. The Davidsons had already arrived earlier than the 9AM attack, but we were still on our way on the tramline. We missed a tram and waited for the next one. If we had been on that previous tram, we would have been right near Notre Dame Cathedral when the attack happened. However, our tram was stopped because of the event which was still unknown to us. We set out on foot but another pedestrian warned us not to go down the main avenue because he had heard 7 or 8 gunshots. We got to our café fine through back-streets but crossed 4 or 5 emergency vehicles as we walked the streets.
All-day long the atmosphere in the city was subdued. The authorities cordoned off the whole area as they looked for other potential threats. Dignitaries came to pay their respect. President Macron changed his schedule to fly to Nice to show his support for our city.
I’ve been connected to France since 1987 and served here for most of the time. These last years have been the worst years for these kinds of events. Extremism is now identified as an enemy of the state and the values of the Republic. People are looking at extremist sub-cultures with distrust and fear. Recently, the trial dealing with the attack in 2015 on the office of the Charlie Hebdo magazine began. Anger and resentment are rising to the surface in the Muslim community as memories are refreshed. Emotions have run high leading to the murder of the High School teacher in Paris. Was this the same emotions that motivated the young Tunisian man to attack worshippers in the church on October 29th? When push comes to shove, moderate, even secularized Muslims become defensive. They're easily provoked to radical positions. Men that are far from living devout lives can have strong reactions in defense of their religion and prophet.
One of the outcomes of extremism is that any view that differs from French cultural norms has become suspect. This includes any expressions of the Christian faith outside of the mainstream denominations. Evangelicals as a whole are viewed this way despite all their efforts to the contrary.
Then in the midst of this falls COVID-19 with all the conspiracy theories and anti-science rhetoric swirling in its wake. It’s disheartening to hear Christians being caught up in these theories and rejecting sound science. It puts the evangelical community firmly in the extremist camp in the minds of some French people.
Most Mondays I go to the small Italian border city of Ventimillia where we serve tea and coffee to the migrants passing through on their way to France. We’ve met lots of Tunisian men over the past weeks. We didn’t cross paths with the attacker as apparently he came through Ventimillia on Wednesday. Christ calls us to be a light in a very dark world. The tendency is to hate, yet Christ calls us to love and prayer for our enemies.
We praise God that during this year we’ve seen people investigate faith and turn to Christ. After serving at the café, my wife and I went to a Bible Study with four young adults from our church. Before we got into the study, one of our friends announced that after last week’s lesson he had prayed to receive Christ that evening. What a joy to be part of his discovering Jesus! What a good way to end a difficult day.