Last night I was asked to read a screenplay on the life of Joshua Milton Blahyi, formerly known as General Butt Naked -- one of the most notorious fighters in Liberia's bloody history. From 1980 up to his conversion in 1996, he and his boy soldiers killed many thousands and engaged in unmentionable atrocities including human sacrifice.
We read the script for Joshua and a couple of other key characters in a quiet living room, to give them a chance to make corrections and suggestions. It was so strange, so sobering, taking on his voice and acting out some of those atrocities -- and right in front of him, too. But it is a truly powerful story, as true to life as a movie can be, of redemption, of transformation, of victory over evil.
Joshua is now a pastor working full-time with ex-combatants, encouraging them to turn from crime to peaceful, Godly lives. To talk and laugh with him now, I can't imagine the things he's seen and done; there isn't a mean bone in his body. That God can so completely transform one life gives me so much hope for the rest of this nation as well.
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