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blaming the victim?

blaming the victim?

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I am reprinting in its entirety a response to a Facebook message posted a week ago by Franklin Graham. The open letter has thirty-two original signatories, including members of the Sojourners community, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Christian educators, and community activists.

Here is Franklin Graham’s post:

Listen up–Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and everybody else. Most police shootings can be avoided. It comes down to respect for authority and obedience. If a police officer tells you to stop, you stop. If a police officer tells you to put your hands in the air, you put your hands in the air. If a police officer tells you to lay down face first with your hands behind your back, you lay down face first with your hands behind your back. It’s as simple as that. Even if you think the police officer is wrong—YOU OBEY. Parents, teach your children to respect and obey those in authority. Mr. President, this is a message our nation needs to hear, and they need to hear it from you. Some of the unnecessary shootings we have seen recently might have been avoided. The Bible says to submit to your leaders and those in authority “because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account.”

And here is the response: …

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talking is easier than doing

talking is easier than doing

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It is easier to write than to do. Easier to complain than to do. Easier to rant and grieve about injustice and unfairness, than to do anything substantial to change the course of injustice and unfairness. Easier to say “No matter who you are, you are welcome here,” than to do the actual welcoming. Easier to be moved to tears by a song about “Jesus in all his distressing disguises,” a song about people failing to meet the eyes of a beggar on the street, than to meet the eyes of the beggar who greets you the next morning on the street.

I am in Nashville this week for the Festival of Homiletics, being edified, insprired, challenged, prepared for ministry by faithful men and women, passionate women and men, perceptive pastors and prophetic preachers, and, mostly, by the God who speaks through them. It is a joy to be here, to be embraced by the Spirit of Jesus, by the wonder of the gospel, by the power of the Word … that speaks to us with the help of its interpreters, and even in spite of the help of its interpreters.

But, most of all, I am reminded how much I am a writer, a talker, a teacher, a commentator. That comes easy. That I do well. And that is a task to which I believe God has called me. But, before all that and above all that, I am called, as we are all called, to do … to do what Jesus does, to go where Jesus goes, whatever that means, wherever that means, with whomever that means. And that is harder for me … and maybe for you, too.

We need to help each other to be the church, to be faithful people, to be faithful followers of Jesus … by what we do. We need to prod each other, provoke each other, not let each other off the hook too easily. At the same time, we need to encourage each other and remind each other from where, from Whom we draw our strength. The songs, the prayers, the Bible study, the sermons make us ready — and remind us of the One on whom we depend — to do whatever it is that God calls us to do.

It may be big, it may be small, but it will be something.

a tragedy of monumental proportion

a tragedy of monumental proportion

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It is …

I can only imagine the agony of being a parent of a Virginia Tech student, waiting to hear if your child is safe … or not.

It is not right. It is not fair. It makes no sense. There is nothing — no hurt, no injury, no frustration, no injustice, no rage — that can justify, or even account for, the blasphemous act of ceding to oneself the right to take another human life.

It is a tragedy of monumental proportion …

… the slaying of thirty-three human beings in Blacksburg, Virginia, no more able to enrich the beauty of the world around them or to be enriched by the beauty of the world around them,

… and the myriad ways we — you and I — cede to ourselves power of the same sort, choosing to impose our will and our way, to work out our frustrations or to satisfy our appetites, without regard for the injury done to other human beings along the way.