Twice in two days, it has been suggested to me that because I have no use for the organization known as Black Lives Matter nor for the slogan that they have introduced into the public sphere, it can only follow that I do not care about the well-being of black people in America. Ironically, that leap of reasoning makes my own point more eloquently than I can.
I wrote an entry last week, attempting to draw a distinction between a virtue that might believe that “black lives matter” and the political movement, Black Lives Matter. The movement is progressive-extremist, Marxist, and according to their own web site, intent on disrupting the western nuclear family. Many have been pointing this out for some time. The previous article was just my own take on the matter. Suffice it to say, I am pleased that many people are beginning to recognize that while the slogan is innocuous enough, the organization is dangerous and treacherous. Thinking people are able to delineate between an okay sentiment and a not-so-okay organization.
Here’s the sticky wicket. The movement coined the slogan and foisted it upon us. The two are conflated by design. The mantra was birthed in demagoguery. It is no accident that if a person refuses to recite the mantra, “black lives matter,” because he does not want to even hint that he supports the organization, he can only be racist. Inevitably, he will be accused of “speaking volumes” with his silence, suggesting that such silence can only mean that black lives do not matter to him. (Perhaps, you have followed a certain NFL player trying to shame a certain NFL owner into jumping on the BLM bandwagon.) Insisting that everyone must recite, “black lives matter,” lest silence renders them racist is a naked manipulation ploy.
So, if a good slogan is the fruit of a poisonous tree (the BLM organization), it appears that social justice warriors who are not out to disrupt the nuclear family have one of two options. They can either try to wrestle the slogan away from its mother and appropriate it for good, or, they can rally around a new slogan, one birthed in less sinister soil. An old friend pointed me to Albert Mohler’s podcast page. A scholar in the Southern Baptist movement, he has dealt with this issue very similarly to me, but his concluding “advice” differs subtly. His conclusion is basically, “Embrace the slogan, but reject the movement.” I prefer, “Embrace the sentiment, reject the movement, but know that if you recite the mantra, you risk identifying yourself with some folks, some ideas and some agendas with which you may not wish to be identified.
Slogans are not my strong suit. “Working Together to Elevate Black Lives without Insisting that White People Must Loathe Themselves and Actually Trying to Work Together for a Degree of Racial Harmony … ‘Matters’”. A little cumbersome for a hat or T-shirt, I suppose.
A fellow who recently circulated a meme defended his effort when called out with an argument that really settled nothing. The premise of the meme was that if one is not willing to say, “black lives matter,” preferring to say, “all lives matter,” then, that person is not paying attention to Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15. You know, ninety-nine were safe; only one was lost. Therefore, the one must matter to a degree the others do not. While the one lost sheep did require a different degree of urgency, what the author leaves out is that Jesus brought the one home and rejoiced. The text is about salvation. But, even if one allows for such a tortured application of a Bible story, the idea is that the lost sheep is restored to the safety of the fold. We see no evidence that the shepherd intended to “disrupt” the existing safety paradigm for the whole one-hundred by tearing down the fold, because the one had a difficult experience.
The meme author’s defense was that Jesus would never respond to a person’s pain with a cliché such as “all lives matter,” that effectively dismisses that sufferer’s pain. I can accept that as far as it goes. However, drawing upon one’s own subjective assessment of what Jesus may or may not say or do carries no more biblical authority than the original mishandling of the text. Apparently, if someone said to Jesus, “black lives matter,” He would only answer, “Of course they do,” so as to not cause greater pain.
This is what we can know: Jesus, the embodiment of Truth, would say the right thing at the right time in any and every circumstance. Indeed, He would never cause needless pain; “a bruised reed, he will not break.” But, if someone came to Jesus, trying to enlist Him into a cause, He might say, “Who made me an arbiter between you and your brother?” Or, He might draw that person into greater eternal truth with a parable. If He knew they were being manipulative and insincere, He might completely disarm them with a brilliant question. Jesus knew what was in a man AND He embodied all truth. That is quite an advantage when responding to situations on the fly. All we can do, in whatever circumstance we find ourselves, is to try to balance whatever wisdom and compassion we have, while crying out for divine help in regard to the compassion and wisdom from above that we need.
Having said that, I have never heard one of the victim’s survivors in one of these recent incidents plead with people to support BLM or to even take up the habit of reciting the slogan. It may have happened, but I would suspect exploitation if it did. The insistence that people embrace that slogan at the exclusion of any alternative tends to come from activists (black and white), celebrities, athletes, panderers as well as some genuinely good-hearted folks and loved ones who cannot quite trust others to think for themselves.
If, for you, saying “all lives matter,” is intended to be a dismissal of another person’s pain, then, do better! That is not why I prefer it. If black lives must matter at the exclusion of other lives mattering, that’s a problem, and I won’t sign up. And, if saying, “black lives matter” or “all lives matter” is the only option I am given, then until a better slogan comes along, I will choose the latter because I want nothing to do with a political movement that advertises some very hellish values. I choose “all lives matter” because it is inclusive and because it is true. Relegating every individual to either Team Villain or Team Victim is of no value at all. It only fuels the resentment, destroys dialogue and renders genuine reconciliation impossible.
Do I believe that black lives matter? Do I support Black Lives Matter (BLM)? Obviously, these are two questions though some would lead you to believe that they are only one. To the former I can only answer with a clear and unambiguous, “Absolutely!” To the latter, I can only answer with a clear and unambiguous, “Absolutely not!” There is no conflict afoot here. One question speaks to a value; the other to a dubious political movement. These are two very distinct questions that cultural manipulators and societal exploiters seem determined to conflate. Do not let them. As matters unfold, one topic has very little to do with the other.
Of course, black lives matter. Black lives are the result of the breath of God breathed into fellow human beings who just happen to have more melanin than I do. Life is not something any biologist has yet figured out how to duplicate in a lab. Science has introduced great advancements for the prolonging of life and for the advancement of its quality. In ICUs, ERs, and even at accident scenes, medical procedures often reignite function into bodily systems that have briefly ceased. But, no scientist, mad or otherwise, has ever simply bestowed life upon something that was never alive.
Life comes from God. Obviously, this betrays the fact that I am not particularly “woke” in that it is the same argument I would apply to the notion that “all lives matter”; red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. (And yes, that includes “blue lives” too.) Life is precious because we cannot replace it. It is why warehousing elderly Covid 19 patients in nursing homes, where we knew the most vulnerable among us reside, was, at best, a foolish blunder and, one can only hope, not a sinister social engineering ploy. Of course, if the decision-makers responsible cannot confess to the one, they could never confess to the other.
God as the Author of life is the simple reason that abortion remains the defining evil of our age. Sadly, even many believers seem to be nodding off to this reality. No amount of societal acceptance will make our present culture of abortion anything but evil. If that seems off-topic, I can only say, “Life matters or it does not.” By the way, you do know that abortion is responsible for the extermination of exponentially more black lives than cops ever could be. That was the “planned” part of Margaret Sanger’s movement, which became Planned Parenthood. Sanger’s positions on controlling the black population are very easy to find. Don’t simply react. Research.
“All lives matter.” Somehow, in this topsy-turvy world, this has become an insensitive and controversial thing to say. People are losing their jobs over it. A particularly “woke” and typically narcissistic celebrity recently announced that people who say this need to be “educated.” I truly believe that all lives matter, simply because we cannot duplicate God’s miracle. Those who are saying all lives matter ARE saying that black lives matter. The movement known as BLM, on the other hand, is a totally different category.
BLM is founded upon a number of dubious narratives: 1) While every life lost in a confrontation with the police is tragic – justified, accidental or homicidal – such killings appear to be anecdotal even though the rhetoric of BLM insists that such killings are epidemic. Statistical reality does not support this. One celebrity in the widely-panned video, “I Take Responsibility,” claimed, “Black people are being slaughtered in the streets.” (Presumably, this is at the hands of the police.) If that premise was even within the stratosphere of reality, protest organizers would have many more instances to draw from … and they would. 2) BLM caught traction in the aftermath of the killing of a young man who was attempting to take a police officer’s firearm. The accompanying cry of BLM proponents, “Don’t shoot,” turned out to be fabricated, but that did not keep it from being perpetuated.
Best scenario: BLM has allowed itself to be appropriated by anarchists, fascists and looters. Worst scenario: The brain-trusts of BLM openly promote anarchy, fascism and looting. Supporters of the movement, some of them among the media, seem to endorse the violence as though that can accomplish anything other than to fuel rage in return and deepen the divisions. My son has a Facebook friend that I don’t mind calling out as a left-wing nutcase. I asked him why he never responds to her. He does not want to get blocked because he finds her to be an amusing curiosity. She made the point that a few cars and buildings burned is a “small price to pay” for the injustices being addressed. She is not the only person that has made this irresponsible argument. In some minds, justice can somehow be served by the destruction and looting of the businesses of bystanders, many of whom are black entrepreneurs. She appears, as have others, to have ceased making such foolish arguments now that the body count of bystanders, many of them black, has begun to mount.
Predictably, corporations, politicians and networks are pandering to BLM with all sorts of empty and symbolic gestures. An NFL quarterback was coerced into apologizing for voicing his disagreement over kneeling for the national anthem. (I don’t actually connect the dots myself between kneeling for a military-themed anthem and this particular grievance.) A Division I college football coach has apologized for wearing a t-shirt with the logo of a conservative-leaning news corporation whose critics feel that it is a little too favorable in its coverage to the President. While I loathe the fascist strong-arming and the speech-suppressing pressure by those claiming to be offended, I am utterly embarrassed for these two men who apologized for daring to hold a point-of-view that is not determined to be “woke.”
So, how should unjust killings by the police be handled? They should be against the law. (Oh, that’s right, they are.) The violators should be arrested and appropriately charged. (I heard that happened as well. In fact, it happened with such lightning quickness that the possibility is very real that over-charging and failing to wait for an autopsy could jeopardize the outcome preferred by many.) If convicted, the guilty party should pay for his crime. (I suspect that will happen as well.)
My point is very simple. Equal application of the law is the best remedy for injustice that any system can offer. Inventing special categories of crimes only muddy the issue and exacerbate tribalism. Where there is injustice, justice must be pursued. Identifying bad cops before they become empowered and having a very real discussion about tactics and methods may very well be in order. However, vilifying every police officer for the action of one or a few is as mindless, knee-jerk, hateful, prejudiced and unjust as would be making sweeping generalizations about ANY segment of the population. And, just to complete the rant: Defunding police departments is stupid, and no society can ever be safe if that which is utterly stupid social policy cannot be condemned as “utterly stupid.”
Even I think I sound like a right-wing zealot. If you knew my history, you would find that very ironic. For all the years I was in ministry, the one thing I caught the single most heat over was my reluctance to be political or to turn services intended for the worship of the living God into patriotic rallies when they coincided with patriotic holidays. But, this transcends mere politics. Our days are becoming too absurd and too dangerous. It’s just a little hard to say nothing. If we become a society driven by emotion and tribalism, wholly indifferent to data, we will never again even sniff the dream of the founders, “to form a more perfect union."
