My Brother's Keeper
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About this ebook
"Jeff, I'm going to hell!"
So begins the incredible, true story, told by the brother of an unlikely hero, Mike Riddering. A divine series of interruptions, his unexpected conversion and simple obedience carried Mike, his wife, and two daughters, from the fast-paced, Florida, yacht broker lifestyle to the dry, desert heat of Sub-Saharan Africa.
My Brother's Keeper is the triumphant story of a man so profoundly transformed by love and faith that the rest of his life would be given to the poorest of the poor in Burkina Faso. It is the story of a modern-day martyr whose life was cut short in a brutal terrorist attack that shocked the nation. An enduring legacy of love-driven global missions speaks directly to the headlines of our day: racism, terrorism, hatred, riots, political divisions, war. Mike's life and death whisper in the midst of rage and retribution the power of love to cover a multitude of sins. In the end, what Mike gave—even to the point of his final sacrifice—can never be taken away. What remains is not the death of a saint, but the life of a servant. My Brother's Keeper will inspire and challenge you to take your place in the great story of God in these final days of history.
Jeff Riddering
Jeff Riddering is a graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary where he studied both theology and marriage and family therapy. After 10 years he left his private practice to become a pastor. Now he is pastoring and leading at the Gateway House of Prayer in St. Louis with his wife, Tammy. Together they have three amazing children.
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My Brother's Keeper - Jeff Riddering
Prologue
As old as sin, as old as love, nearly as old as man and wife, is brotherhood. In the beginning, there was a man and a woman, and soon, two sons. Brothers. Is there anything more sublime and joyful than two brothers who love one another, or two sisters, or two siblings? If you are a parent, you know exactly what I am talking about. How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!
God says in Psalm 133. Yet sadly, there was trouble between Cain and Abel: competitiveness, strife, jealousy and murder. This was more than boys will be boys.
God spoke to Cain, Where is your brother?
That questions haunts me. Where is Mike, my brother? He was murdered. I am in shock even to write that word. I loved Mike fiercely, and was more than a little in awe of his life. My goal with this book is to supply my own feeble answer to one of the very first questions posed by God to a human. Where is your brother? Obviously, God knew the answer. So we must ask, what was He wanting Cain to recognize, realize, or confess? The question of keeping our brother
reveals the depths of God’s fatherhood, in that He wants His family to love one another. His question to Cain was clearly meant to prick the hardened conscience of a murderer, but should it provoke us any less? Do we invest in, care for, and steward one another’s lives and legacies? Are we passive or active in promoting and securing one another’s highest good? Worse, am I jealous of another’s success and apathetic when they suffer? Does their well-being matter to me as much as my own? Are we truly responsible for one another as a family of love, or are we lone islands simply trying to chase our own dreams and fulfill our own callings?
The fact is, I am my brother’s keeper. When it comes to Mike, that question is easy. Yet here’s the deal: in the cosmic span of our collective human experience, the men who murdered Mike were no less his brother, and no less mine. They were Muslims, descendants of Adam, possibly even Abraham. Mike was a Christian missionary to the nation of Burkina Faso. They shared humanity, shared masculinity, shared a zeal for their own respective faiths. Their convictions led them to take Mike’s life. Mike’s conviction led him to give it.
Where is my brother?
On the one hand, I could easily shake with rage at the men who took my brother's life. And in the very same breath of my own righteous anger, in the very act of mourning and yearning for justice, I must recognize that unless I see them as brothers, then I stand in a long line of Cains on the earth, harboring murder in my heart as much as they.
They may have acted as did Cain, committing a more explicit sin, but if I think like Cain toward them, no matter how justified it may seem, I am no less the target of God’s question: Where is my brother? In fact, who is my brother? And now I must realize, He is not talking to me about Mike, but about the men who killed him.
Typical of humans, Cain ducks responsibility. I feel the sting of the question in my own soul, so much that I don’t want to answer. I understand Cain better than ever as he cleverly tries to outthink God with blame-shifting and question-for-question banter.
Am I my brother’s keeper?
C’mon, God, really? Do You really expect me to love them? I’m busy enough just trying to forgive them. How deep does my responsibility go? Does mercy stain me to the bone, or is it a thin veneer I wear when comfortable and reasonable?
We all know that we are responsible for our own lives. Does God really expect us to be responsible for everyone else’s life, too? More specifically, are your freewill mistakes and choices supposed to be my burden? And are mine supposed to be yours?
These are both simple and profound questions that lie at the heart of human interaction. I am also asking myself, and you, dear reader, hard questions framed by the answer of my brother’s own example, and in the process to behold an answer as bright as the flashes of fire before they gunned him down. Honestly, I thought he had more time, decades more. I didn’t think he would die, at least not like this, leaving behind a wife and children, a work still in progress. His end was dramatic, unforeseen and tragic; yet, in many respects it was the obvious culmination of his life and priorities—choices made over and over in big and small ways, to serve, give, and die, if needed, daily, to care for others. Who is my brother? Mike would say, The orphans I loved. The family we shared. The people on the other side of the street and the other side of the world.
Oh, I agree…
I say, in my head. A memory. A pain in my soul.
I can see his piercing eyes, locking onto my own with gentle correction. But that’s not all, Jeff. Don’t forget, it is also the man who killed me. He is our brother.
To Cain, jealousy and regret were less costly personal burdens than the challenge of brotherly responsibility. He thought it simpler to remove his problem, even his brother, if needed, rather than deal with the emotional and circumstantial strain which relationship can bring. This tragedy extends into every sphere of society and politics (racial conflict, liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans) and beyond into foreign policy. It is a global dilemma of the most intimate kind, because it starts in our own homes and lives. The choice, and the pain, is all around us. We live in a world where words and phrases like Jihadist bombings, beheadings, inner-city violence, termination of human life, war, massacres, school shootings, bullying, suicides, hate crimes, gang wars, human trafficking, sex offenders and death-toll are becoming commonplace. Tragically, the story of Cain and Abel has not ceased for six thousand years. Brother uses, abuses or murders brother daily. It’s in all our headlines.
Shortly after the terrorist attack that killed him, I was interviewed by national media outlets. One of the first reporters asked what I thought about the lack of missile response in the war on terror. I wouldn’t consider myself a political pacifist at all, but I responded by saying, we don’t need more missiles to fight terror: we need more Mike Ridderings.
We need people who are so transformed by the love of God that they carry with them, into every need, every crisis, the greatest solution of all—certainly one more powerful than missiles. Believing God’s love to be the answer to terror probably sounded cliché or over simplistic, which might explain why that footage didn’t make it to the broadcast edit.
While my brother’s death certainly adds poignancy and reflection, I believe his life and work would still be worth deep consideration even if he had not been killed by terrorists. Michael was convinced that he was his brother’s keeper. During the last third of his life, he loved at a furious pace, maybe even recklessly by some standards.
In the heyday and popularity of Michael Jordan’s stellar basketball career, you may have heard the phrase, Be like Mike.
Often these days, I hear those three words ringing in my head. As the brother of a true hero of the faith, a modern martyr and, for me, an excellent friend, I offer to you the life of a simple man. Not a superstar. Prior to this book, you may not have heard of Mike Riddering. But along the way, let us consider together what it might mean to be like Mike
in today’s confusing, often loveless, self-centered world.
I think you will find many of these stories fascinating, and hopefully draw courage to follow in my brother’s footsteps. For me, this book is very personal. I need a higher quality of love, a different measuring stick than I tend to live by; and so I am growing and changing. Ironically, my brother is keeping
me close to God in his passing, as much or more than he did while alive.
Such things are worth celebrating, honoring and emulating.
1
Under the Cross
I’ve preached in Burkina Faso many times, to crowds of thousands, but never like this. Never one quite this size, and never on a day like today. I had gone for a walk earlier, needing to be alone. Paths made by, and for, bare feet snaked into fields flanked by golden millet stubs from last season’s harvest. I was alone with my thoughts. The school grounds where Mike was to be buried was north of the savanna, where a lit match or a lightning strike could easily set the ground ablaze in seconds. Here in the burning heat of the Sahel region, the scrub brush and foliage were simply too sparse for fire to be a risk. I took a deep breath.
This is happening, I thought. My heaving chest did not struggle for the dry air so much as comprehension. Really. Happening.
But how…how was this happening? I returned back to the compound, listening to the stillness of the wind as if my brother might call my name across the field. That’s when I noticed before me, the spontaneous procession of cars and motos, as far as I could see, all going in the same direction. I didn’t know there were that many automobiles in the entire region. I was stunned. I heard the gentle murmurs of disbelief around me as people reached out to touch me, wordless in their grief. The soft sound of weeping filled the air. Thousands of pained white eyes in a sea of dark skin betrayed the fact that they were feeling what I felt. The atmosphere was lacquered with affection and sorrow, moving hundreds to make the long trek by foot from surrounding villages, some dozens of kilometers away. They came because they must, because they needed to say goodbye to a spiritual father, mentor and friend. My brother.
The palpable sense of the unreality of that day still exists in my mind. I still pick up