Yesterday I was very angry. Yesterday I wrote about the problems I share with my fellow Caucasians, how broken we are as a society, how great the problems we have are. I had finished watching the segment of the bond hearing where the Judge urged us to see the Charleston's shooters family as "victims" and got sick to my stomach.
We are broken, have no doubt.
But then, a while later, I watched the rest of the video, and listened, along with Dylann Roof, as the families of those he killed forgave him.
It was stunning. It was powerful. The media, which has never really gotten what Christianity is actually about (for which they can hardly be blamed, too many Westboro Baptists out there diluting the message) was stunned, and hardly knew what to say. Even quite a few Christians I have read, who SHOULD know what we are about, have almost rolled their eyes. "Yeah, yeah, we're supposed to forgive, but REALLY I'll bet what they want..."
No. This wasn't simply meaningless Christianspeak. This was powerful, perhaps the most powerful and positive act of Christian love the greater public has seen in years. This is who we are supposed to be, what we are supposed to do. Amidst the cacophony of voices claiming Christianity in terms of condemnation and judgement this group of families stood up and served notice of what the faith really looks like.
And whatever you do, do not mistake this as a passive act, of sitting back just hoping things will okay. That is not how Christian love works. It is neither a hand-waving of an offense or a defense of the status quo (for more on that, read MLK Jr.'s letters from Birmingham Jail). It was a bold judgement on our society in general, and a defeat of Dylann Roof specifically.
Because Dylann Roof isn't crazy. This wasn't the act of a madman. This was a considered act, weighed within the worldview he was raised in and carried out with a specific purpose... the desire to start a war. These were to be the first shots, shots he expected to be reciprocated. I don't know how much farther out he planned it, but given recent events, such as in Ferguson or Baltimore, it wasn't far fetched. White person shoots black people, black people attack white people, and then the authorities come in, do what they've been doing recently and then boom... the war is on.
And it might have worked. His acts caused anger, no doubt, and every act of the legal authorities surrounding him seemed to enrage the situation further. You could read the smugness in his face as he was arrested calmly, in front of the cameras. It was what he wanted, how he thought things would go.
That look remained until the bond hearing, when something happened that he didn't expect. The families did not curse him, did not howl for his blood, did not demand that he face them and then rush him in an act of bloody vengeance. They forgave him. They refused to give him the war he wanted. Despite living in a world that routinely mistakes vengeance for justice, despite every voice around them expecting them to come after him with the same hatred that sent him after their loved ones, despite being given every reason to believe that the Justice System did not have their best interests, or even justice, at heart... they forgave him.
And in doing that, they have won. In doing that they defeated him, and shamed him, showing him that the assumptions he'd made about his world were wrong, showing him that they weren't the animals he believed them to be, but rather were more human than anyone he'd ever known.
The trial continues. We owe it to ourselves, as a nation, to see to it that justice is done. To see that this act of racial hatred is punished as such, to show to our African American brothers and sisters that THEY are our brothers and sisters, and not terrorists who commit hate crimes against them. We still have to get this right.
But for those families, they have already won. They will mourn their loved ones, but they are free of Dylann Roof's power. They have defeated him utterly. And THAT is what victory in Christ looks like.
Amen!
ReplyDeleteThanks for saying it so well. Victory is in the families because Jesus is in them.
ReplyDeleteWhenever a tragic mass shooting occurs I think of the family of the perpetrator as victims. As a parent I have witnessed my children do things that I would never condone. I watched my son spit in the face of a woman for no reason and was appalled when he refused to apologise. I lived in a town where the teenagers had a white supremicist party with guns. This was in rural Wisconsins where hunting is a part of life but the next day every single family with guns, including their hunting rifles, either turned them in to authorities or moved them to a location outside their homes. Parent are major influencers in their children's lives, but there are other influences too and when a child commits an act as heinous as that, the parents grieve and wonder where they went wrong. They too are victims.
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