It has been quite a week in our city.
A tragedy happened on July 5. Right or wrong, justified or unjustified, fear-motivated or race-motivated, a human life was taken. And from all accounts, it did not need to happen.
But it did.
The editorial in the local Baton Rouge newspaper on July 7 captured the tragedy well.
A grave complication of viral videos is that the lives depicted in the moving images can become reduced rather than enlarged. Instead of individuals, we begin to see icons of some dry, uppercase abstraction — Racism, Poverty, Crime, Police Brutality.
Conscience calls us to remember that the men in the Sterling videos — not only Sterling, but the policemen who were with him — are human beings, not merely characters in a morbid blockbuster. To treat them as anything less is to diminish all human life, which would be a tragedy in itself.
I lament for the family and friends of Alton Sterling. I lament as well for the police officers and their families who will replay that night over and over in their heads and feel the effects for the rest of their lives.
Somehow we have lost sight of our common humanity. Video and social media tend to make events less real. Stereotypes turn fellow humans into caricatures that rarely fit the complexity of who we really are.
I am sure racism still exists in America. We are divided, fearful, unsure of one another. I can't crawl into the skin of another human being. I don't know what it is like. I can't pretend that I do.
Proverbs 14:10 reminds us that the heart knows its own bitterness and no stranger shares its joy. In some sense, we are all isolated from one another. I can't assume that I know what anyone else is going through, what they have experienced, what they feel, what they fear.
And no one can truly understand my own heart either. I even struggle to understand myself at times.
That is why things don't fit into easy categories. That is why the narrative of the media never tells the whole story. That is why the issues go much deeper than skin color.
As I have gone through the past few days in Baton Rouge, I have felt a mixture of sadness, burden, discouragement, fear, frustration, oppression. The divide in our nation seems so wide. True dialogue seems to have disappeared. Anger. Vengeance. Lawlessness seem to rule the day.
I have been driven to my knees. I pray for our nation. I pray for those in law enforcement. I pray for those who feel like victims in their own communities. I pray for pastors and churches. I pray for my own boys, wondering what kind of world they will inherit.
But I can't give in to fear. I can't retreat. I can't solve the problems of the world but I can continue to show love, to seek to understand, to pursue peace.
It is not the big act posted on social media that makes the difference but the smaller ones done day to day that are rarely seen.
Through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another (Galatians 5:13b-15).
The wounds are deep in our nation. But I know One whose wounds are deeper.
True justice and true grace intersect on the Cross where Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18).
The ground is level at the foot of the Cross.
That's the one place where we all stand united.
