Seasons Greetings.
I've tried not to post too much about Ferguson, because, well, everyone is posting about Ferguson. But I'm bothered. I'm also white, educated, and straight... I feel like anything I say always already sounds like it comes from the section of the mainstream culture that has earned the right to not be listened to.
But I'd love to have a discussion with you nonetheless. There are many identities at stake. The question at hand seems to be boil down to social culpability. Both those who self identify with the cop, and those who self identify with the man who was shot want to answer that question. Screaming out of all my news feeds has been this one theme "but he was innocent because...!"
What about the rest of us? What about those of who self identify with the crowd? We watchers of American life, what is our social culpability? We examine the status quo and examine it -- but we also allow it to exist. We profit from the system. For us, for us watchers, the system is nurturing. It provides the context in which we live and move and have our lives. When does watching become an act that is no longer morally (or even ethically) neutral? Are there other options? If not, if watching is the only act available to us, are we content with that? Why?
Exodus describes God as the God who takes people who are slaves to arguably the most powerful state in the region at that time and makes them free people. They are commanded to glorify God by being kind, fair, and gracious to the alien and widow and socially dis-empowered among them. It is possible to summarize the prophetic literature in the OT in relation to this identity. Don't be like the nations around you who are unfair, unkind, and un-gracious to the socially dis-empowered.
In Matthew and Luke, Jesus self describes in predictable, prophetic, language, "I have come to heal the broken hearted, and preach deliverance to the poor." In John, light is a thematic element that is associated with the mission of Jesus in the world. When Christ comes, light comes with him. If we accept that at least part of why Jesus came into the world is to do what He said he came to do, then how do we accept into our lives the beautiful words of John 3?
"and this is the verdict: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked deeds hates the light and does not come into the light lest their deeds be exposed."
The desperate fight to establish social culpability, is also a social conflict about vindication. It is difficult, in part, because there is no real saving face. If we maintain the status quo, we have to be completely ok with a system that is quite possibly guilty of systematically denying equal opportunity to Americans whose skin is black. If we disrupt the status quo, we have to be completely ok with admitting that we watchers have culpability in this systematic inequality.
We are culpable in part because we watchers of society have watched everything but precisely this dynamic. We bought into the idea that the war on drugs, or the fact that a black man is fantastically more likely to be imprisoned than a white man kept us safe. We have to willing to confess our dual blindness - we celebrate Martin Luther King day while allowing Americans who are black to be the 'other' from whom we are protected by our police.
A reconciliation of the social bodies at odds in the Ferguson story that does not also create justice is cheap, insulting, and, at best, an enforced peace. For now, we who watch do well to remember that there is a verdict. Evil deeds are possible. Deeds are evil when they result in darkness. Find that which is hidden in our culture, and bring it into the light. Do so with grace and love.
Seasons Greetings.
