There’s really only one thing to talk about right now*.
The other day I ran to Linden Hills, one of the further removed and wealthier parts of Minneapolis, and only found one direct artifact of the rioting: a smashed window in a small jewelry store. In nearly every other store, though, there were some signs that were a little less directly about the protests, some painted on the plywood used to protect the storefronts: #BlackLivesMatter repeated a hundred times, Martin Luther King quotes, lists of other black men murdered. One local children’s bookstore had tiny red handprints under the message “Justice for George,” while the bakery next door marked itself a minority-owned business. I don’t doubt that many of these were put up by people who legitimately believe in the cause, especially because many of them put up similar signs after the police murdered other black men. But I also can’t help but remember the Bible story of passover, when every Israelite family put a mark of lamb’s blood on their door so that the angel of death, out to kill each firstborn Egyptian, would pass them by. The business owners are sending the same message in their store window printouts as the Israelites did in the blood mark: “We’re on your side. Spare us from your wrath.”
It probably seems a little harsh to compare the protesters to a vengeful God, and maybe it is a little misleading when the vast, vast majority of them are peaceful. But keep in mind, God is good in this story. In what seems almost too on-the-nose, the angel of death came to punish Egyptians for keeping the Israelites as slaves. It can be hard to relate this wrathful God to the common Christian understanding of a gentle, forgiving Jesus. In fact, I often explain away troubling Old Testament stories as misinterpretations of the divine truth. But the fact remains: punishment, wrath, and righteous fury have a place in Christian morality. And if there were ever a time for these, it is after an unjust murder, supported by a rotten system.
All of this is a very simple idea applied to a very complex situation, though. For one, we don’t know who exactly is doing what in the rioting. A family friend in the Twin Cities had to leave her home Saturday night because the entire street was lined with cars with out-of-state license plates, every passenger white and male and visibly angry. Also, I feel the need to say again (because it isn’t said often enough) most protesters are nonviolent, so we shouldn’t attribute the destruction in the Twin Cities to the entire group. Maybe the most important complication, though, is that the people whose places of life and work have been destroyed by the riots have legitimate suffering and pain.
Still, something to remember is that property matters, but life is always infinitely more important. That’s something I think we as a country have been bad about lately: we mourn the 100,000 dead alongside the growing unemployment and failing economy as though they all deserve the same level of grief. In the same way, I’ve often heard people say, “What happened to George Floyd is terrible, but-” and then go on to say something about looting or rioting. But none of the burning buildings or shattered windows can ever match the tragedy of a human life lost. And that human life didn’t disappear on accident or out of inevitability. George Floyd’s life was taken a racist system that has killed countless other black men like him. I believe that these protests can lead to change, which will save lives of black men who shouldn’t be at risk anyway. And, in that way, these protests are truly Christian.
What isn’t Christian, though, is the police and Trump administration’s response. There is nothing Christian, nothing good under any moral code, in firing tear gas and rubber bullets at nonviolent protesters and reporters. Worst of all is Trump himself, who had police fire tear gas at priests who were handing out medical supplies to protests in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, all to take a photo of himself holding a Bible, to try an convince the nation that his racist opposition to reform is somehow Christian.
It’s hard for me to read a sentence like that last one and not despair. And I know that my despair is nothing compared to what people of color experience routinely.
Acknowledging the tragedy of what has happened and hoping for what change might come from it is a tight balance to keep. But at least, when this tragedy is impossible to hide from, we might finally motivate real change.
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* For those of you reading this blog long after the fact, a little more than a week ago a black man named George Floyd was murdered by a police officer for using a fake $20 bill. It has sparked a lot of peaceful protest, some arson, vandalism, and looting, and a lot more police violence.
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