Dear Officer: We See You.

Please watch the video linked here. I want to say a few things about it and you'll need to have watched it to understand everything I'm trying to say.

Watched it? Good. Here's my response:

First of all, I agree with much of it. Honestly, being a cop is a difficult, challenging, and largely thankless job. Anyone willing to put themselves in harm's way to "protect and serve" on a daily basis is worthy of our support and respect.

There was once a time in my life when I wanted to be a cop. Largely because of what I had been exposed to in TV and Movies, I thought being a police officer would be exciting and fun.

But then I read a book that was a collection of interviews with actual, real-world police officers and that changed my mind in a hurry. These guys talked about walking into houses where people had been dead for weeks and how the smell nearly suffocated them. They talked about getting calls to dangerous neighborhoods in the middle of the night and discovering that it was a trap and there were guys with shotguns waiting to kill them when they entered the dark warehouse. They talked about cleaning the brains of their partner off their uniforms after a deadly shoot-out.

That's when I decided that I should stick to writing.

Police work is more difficult and challenging than most of us will ever - ever - know.

Having said that, there is much in this video that I disagree with. Actually, a whole lot.

Those who created this video have done so largely as a response to "those who crucify (cop's) character while minimizing (their) cause", and by that they mean people who make up the "very vocal and sparse opposition (who) flood social media with their misplaced passions and their idea of justice." [To quote the video above]

The incidents they are referring to, no doubt, include the recent shootings of unarmed black men (and women) by police officers over the last year or so. For more specifics on who those people were and how many, you can see a short summary here.

What I object to is the suggestion that those who are critical of the specific police officers who shot and killed these unarmed black people are guilty of "crucifying" the character of every other police officer.

Question: Would it be "crucifying the character" of every school teacher to criticize the few school teachers who (about every other month it seems) get caught having sex with their under age students?

Would you accuse someone who spoke out about priests who sexually molest children in their congregations of having "misplaced passions" or "wrong ideas of justice?"

Yet, whenever someone (like me) shares a link on Twitter or Facebook about yet another police officer shooting involving an unarmed black man or woman, the response is often a very vocal "Shame on you!" for daring to even mention such behavior in a negative light - much less write an actual blog article (like this one).

Furthermore, would we be ok if those teachers were caught molesting our children on video, and yet a Grand Jury decided not to prosecute them, and then they were put back into the classroom again where they could continue to harm more children? Would that be ok?

With priests, isn't it true that we hold them to a higher standard of accountability simply because of the authority and trust we put in them as people who are sworn to integrity and honor?

And when evidence of widespread abuse of that authority by church leaders comes to light, are we not outraged about that and moved to action? Don't we want those people to be put on trial, and for justice to be done and for the victims to have a voice?

So, why is it that when a police officer - someone who is equally held in high esteem and honor within our society - breaks that trust, commits a crime, or kills an unarmed person, we suddenly look down on anyone who cries out for justice, or stands up for the victims, or speaks out?

The video clip does make a few good points about policemen: Most are good, hard working, conscientious people. They love their children. They love their wives and husbands. They love their dog and they laugh and cry and bleed just like every other person on the planet.

What I would like to challenge, however, is the idea that every police officer is automatically "honorable...courageous..." and "...worthy of a nation's support".

Really? What about Christopher Dorner? He was a US Navy officer who served honorably and received several commendations for his service in Bahrain, and then went on to join the LAPD. Soon after, he was fired for attempting to blow the whistle on another officer who was using excessive force. After that termination, he went on a shooting spree and killed several innocent people until he was eventually cornered and shot.

Even the most ardent supporter of police officers would have to admit that there are some police officers who are not worthy of the badge.

And if we really want people to trust the police officers in our community, and to reasonably teach our children to do so, then we need to start seeing abuses of power dealt with and punished - not covered up and shouted down.

Not every police officer is automatically "honorable, courageous and worthy of a nation's support."

Neither is every school teacher automatically a great person, or a wonderful member of society.

Nor is every member of the clergy someone that every one should respect and honor.

The only people worthy of our honor and our respect are those who are actually honorable.

If a police officer shoots and kills an unarmed 12 year old, he is not honorable or courageous or worthy of our support.

If a school teacher sexually assaults a student, he is not worthy of our respect.

If a priest or a pastor takes advantage of a child, he is not someone we should honor.

Back to the video clip above: I won't even try to get into the fact that this video features a cast of 23 white people and only 2 African Americans, or argue with their statistic that "Every 53 hours an officer is killed in the line of duty"  - which is totally false and can easily be refuted with a quick Google search. (Actual numbers are about half of that).

At one point the narrator says, "I wish I knew how to fix it." But what she wants to "fix" isn't the seemingly endless barrage of unarmed black people shot by police. Nope. What she wants to know how to "fix" is the way police officers are perceived in the media, and by the American public. Specifically, she wants to stop people from criticizing police officers, regardless of why they criticize them.

One idea: Start eliminating "bad cops" who use excessive force. Stop punishing "good cops" who try to blow the whistle. Start weeding out applicants at the Police Academy level who tend to be bullies who can't wait to get that badge and gun. Start putting police officers who use excessive force on trial for their crimes. Start prosecuting cops who choke people to death on the sidewalk, or who shoot 12 year olds dead in the park, etc.

Any of those ideas would be a great start. But it's much easier to just make a video.

I'm all in favor of honoring the good cops who genuinely care about the people they protect and serve. Let's do all we can to help them. We need their tribe to increase.

But at the same time, let's please also do all we can to eliminate the bad cops who give those good cops a bad name.

Why would anyone be against the idea of doing both?

-kg

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MORE STATISTICS

Out of roughly 400 reported police killings annually, an average of 96 involved a white police officer killing a black person.

African-Americans and the mentally ill people make up a huge percentage of people killed by police.

27 police officers were killed in 2013, according to the FBI.

There were no fatal police shootings in Great Britain last year. Not one.

In Germany, there have been eight police killings over the past two years.

In Canada — a country with its own frontier ethos and no great aversion to firearms — police shootings average about a dozen a year.

GUEST POST: Gospel Gardening: Ferguson and Beyond, by Darryl Ford

Something is wrong with our garden. God cares about it. We should too.

 There are weeds preventing water from reaching the soil. There are plants suffering drought. There are areas where soil nutrients are being overtaxed. Recent events are a reminder that our garden in America is unhealthy and is in desperate need of maintenance. Specifically when we look at the powder keg that is race in America.

A few examples: The shooting fatality of Mike Brown in Ferguson. The choking fatality of Eric Garner in Staten Island, NY. The shooting fatality of John Crawford III in a southwestern Ohio Walmart. The shooting fatality of Ezell Ford in Los Angeles. The shooting fatality of Darrien Hunt outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. All unarmed African Americans killed while being arrested or in custody.

There are also certainly huge issues within the African American community. High absentee father rates, high incarceration rates, and high recidivism rates remind us that there are significant issues without clear answers. But one thing is clear, regardless of what side of these issues you’re on.

Something is wrong with our garden. God cares about it. We should too.

Sadly, some of us know this and are apathetic and uncaring. Others of us don’t know that we should care. Within American evangelicalism, both groups route their apathy and/or ignorance in hollowed out churchy platitudes like “Racism is bad, but sin is the real problem” or “Racism will never end until Jesus returns". Platitudes like these, even if true, provide convenient ways to ignore the holistic mission of God in all the world to which He has called his people.

We are created to be Gospel Gardeners.

Part of the reason I think we (including myself) can become apathetic or ignorant on issues of systemic injustice is because of how we are likely to answer this question: “What is the oldest job in the world?” If your answer is “Prostitution”, you’d be wrong. (Thanks a lot Rudyard Kipling!)

We learn what the first vocation given by God actually is in Genesis 2:15:

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it”.

The first job given to Adam was two-fold: To work it (Hebrew word ‘abad’ meaning to tend, prepare and cultivate) and to keep it (Hebrew word ‘shamar’ meaning to preserve or guard it).

The garden was the place where God created man to dwell. We were created to cultivate and protect the garden. We were created to be Gardener-Guardians. Although Adam and Eve were kicked out of the original garden, our garden is wherever God’s people are. God always expected his image bearers to tend the garden. We see this in the OT:

Zechariah 7:9-19 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another. Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against one another in your heart.”

Psalm 82:3-4 “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

Micah 6:8 “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but you do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”

God has called us to always care about the garden. This includes both individual sin issues, as well as systemic injustices. Sadly, we usually emphasize one at the expense of the other. And in the case of American evangelicalism, we avoid the issue of systemic racism and injustice by emphasizing individual sin exclusively.

On the Sunday after the Travon Martin/George Zimmerman decision, or the Sunday after Mike Brown’s death, many majority culture, predominately white churches were largely silent. Church went on like usual. Conversely, many ethnic minority churches were heavily conversant on that Sunday morning. For those churches, Sunday was a day of heart wrenching mourning.

God shows us that caring for the garden means we mourn with those who are mourning. We don’t have to necessarily agree on the reason for their mourning. We still mourn with them because they mourn. This is how community in the garden is supposed to work.

Something is wrong with our garden. God cares about it. We should too.

We struggle with caring because we are beholden to an abrogated and truncated gospel.

We fail to do justice because we don’t understand it. It’s been hijacked politically. Regardless of your political flavor, you have an understanding of justice that likely isn’t God’s definition. Justice in scripture means to make things right. It means fulfilling mutual obligation.

When justice is mentioned in scripture, you normally see these words close by: widow, fatherless, poor, hungry, stranger/immigrant, needy, weak and oppressed. This means we don’t turn a blind eye and/or a deaf ear to those who are unjustly affected by a broken system.

It’s why I don’t believe believers (gospel gardeners) should avoid the news. A lot of us avoid the news because it’s so “negative” and “sad” and it gets us down. This isn’t only because we can be apathetic or callous. For many of us, injustice can be so overwhelming because of the sheer enormity of the issues. We can’t begin to think about how we could ever fix the problems, so why expend emotional and intellectual capital on it? I believe this is the subtle way that, as American evangelicals,  we anesthetize ourselves from mourning injustice. In so doing, we grieve the heart of God.

Something is wrong with our garden. God cares about it. We should too.

We mourn the ways in which the garden doesn’t work. God hates injustice! He hates when people use power and privilege for exploitation and not human flourishing.

If righteousness means making things right within, then justice means being made right without! This means that, to quote Jim Wallis, “Your faith may be personal, but it is never private”. God’s mission isn’t just to redeem broken people, but to redeem broken systems. We are called into a relationship with Christ in which we are changed and re-oriented to use our passions, talents, gifting and vocation to advocate for human flourishing.

So how should Christians respond?

As an African American pastor of a new multi-cultural church plant in Atlanta, I don’t have the luxury of ignoring the ways in which the garden doesn’t allow for people to flourish. I can’t avoid the fact that there are at least two different perspectives of law enforcement in my own household. My wife (who is White and grew up in an upper middle class white suburb of Chicago) had an experience with police officers quite opposite from me (a Black man who grew up in Detroit). We both have experienced being pulled over and although she was driving, the first question the white police officer would ask is “Ma’am, are you ok???” as if to imply that this woman had to have been with me against her will.

Don’t get me wrong. I also have family members and friends that are exemplary police officers. The issue isn’t about how great or horrible cops are. Beyond anecdotes, the point is that we have a huge challenge to cultivate and protect our garden. How do we do this?

Well, a good gardener always looks for the things that may inhibit the garden’s flourishing.

1.    Listen, Learn and Locate: This means we look for weeds. We learn the reasons weeds exist. This means being slow to speak and being quick to listen to others’ accounts of how the garden doesn’t work well for them. This means we don’t use our experience as the litmus test for whether or not their experience is legitimate. We listen and learn. What does law enforcement look like in our garden? What does access to good education look like? What does access to good jobs look like? What do family structures and dynamics look like? What systems are in place that unfairly and unintentionally benefit some and harm others?

2.    We Engage: This means we engage in prompt weed removal to prevent more weeds from becoming established. This keeps weeds from robbing moisture and nutrients from other plants. This also keeps from allowing a haven for pests and disease to exist. When we see injustice, we become burdened and we act. Whether it’s predatory lending, or exploitative check cashing businesses, we work to end their existence. Even if we do it imperfectly, we still image God well when we do.

3.    Monitor: We look for symptoms of disease or pest problems regularly. Individual sin is definitely at play in all forms of injustice. That’s not going to be eradicated on this side of eternity. This means we expect to see systemic injustice arise in myriad forms. We need to keep a watchful eye as we guard the garden.

4.    Expect: While injustice won’t be eradicated completely, we can see signs of hope. The beauty of our hope being rooted in the resurrection, is that we have a new life and new creation to look forward to. But this doesn’t mean we hide in our prayer closets in our bubbles and wait for Jesus to rescue us. Saying “racism will always be here so it’s silly to rail against it” ignores the holistic gospel mission of God.

The reason the Lord’s prayer includes “Your kingdom come, your will be done in Earth as it is in heaven” is because in caring for the garden, we become signposts for the kingdom that is coming. We give a picture of what perfect community looks like in Revelation 7:9-10:

“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Mike Brown’s death is bigger than whether or not he “deserved” it, or whether or not he “brought it on himself”. I’m not sure if we’ll ever truly know that. What we do know is that this forces a larger courageous conversation that needs to be had by American Evangelicals. A conversation guided by this question, “How is our garden doing? Any other response, whether it’s looting or ignorant passivity is at best lazy, and at worst blatant disregard for the heart of God.

Something is wrong with our garden. God cares about it. We should too. 

GUEST POST: Ferguson by Embo Tshimanga

Ferguson

NOVEMBER 26, 2014 BY LIFE W/ EM

I’ve been pondering over Ferguson since the beginning and it’s crazy how quickly things are escalating.

Firstly, I’ve never felt so numb, disappointed, sad and mad over what’s been happening and how quickly things are changing. I am fervently praying for peace.

Knee jerk reactions and generalizations are booming across social media and the news but I believe that you must listen in order to speak. Generalizations deny the reality of any given situation and truth must be foundation, then love.

To those who state Jesus and the church is not involved in this, I simply believe you are wrong. In I am in no way passing judgement on their beliefs, I am merely stating my opinion. I believe that this world that we inhabit and all that occurs within it is not our own, I believe that it is His and His alone. 

That being said, all that occurs and this world itself along with those who inhabit it, are His. The aspect of unity especially in the church is so much deeper than before. God is infinitely and intricately woven into all events of this world, including the ones of Ferguson, Missouri. This is much much deeper than a “black vs. white” thing. 

The story of Ferguson, Missouri is one that has gripped the hearts of not only African American people, but people of the Asian, Hispanic, and White race from the beginning. Ferguson is not a clear cut black vs. white event though society it has been deemed that way. 

Both sides of Ferguson are understandable- I can admit that. I understand the anger land uproar on both sides, because let’s be real- no matter the outcome, the protesting would’ve happened either way. I am so saddened.

I admire The Brown Family for their courage and bravery of their peaceful words. Many people have asked me simply because of the reason I am an African American whose side I’m on in regards to this case but the thing is, my stance is irrelevant, my “biased” beliefs are irrelevant, and more so, my skin color does not matter either because it isn’t a skin problem, or a black vs. white problem,or a racism problem. I love what Benjamin Watson said, “it’s a sin problem,” it is sin that has made this world that full of corruption- not the fact that I’m African American or white- sin. It is a sin problem. 

Sin is a tree in this world with many roots. As an African American person, it’s heartbreaking, our nation seems hopeless. As an African American Christian, I feel hopeful because our only hope, the only explanation, is Him. Not in that sense, but more in a sense that while there is still racial discrimination and issues, it’s lessened over the years and we’ve obtained a new sort of “normalcy”. As I’ve said before, my stance is with Him, because He alone is the only hope for this world. I’m with Jesus.

I’ve prayed about it, and I’ve thought about it and 1 Peter 4:7-8 is what came to mind:

"The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4:7-8)

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Read Embo's blog here>

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NOTE: This is the first in a possible series of guest blog posts where I will open my blog up to African American Christian's who share their perspectives on Ferguson, in hopes that those of us who are White can see this from another angle.

-kg