Way back in 1966, Stephen Stills – then part of Buffalo Springfield – wrote “For What it’s Worth.” “There’s something happenin’ here/what it is ain’t exactly clear/there’s a man with a gun over there/tellin’ me I got to beware.” It has been another week of troubling violence in our country; something is definitely happening.
In Baton Rouge, a suspect who was apparently pinned by two police officers was shot 6 times and died at the scene. In St. Paul a car was pulled over for a faulty taillight and as the passenger was reaching for his driver’s license, he was shot a killed. Both incidents were videoed and both involved young, African American men and white police officers.
During a protest in Dallas related to police shootings, at least one sniper shot 11 police officers, five of them died. Something is definitely happening, and it is disturbing all around. I will make no effort to offer a simple solution because it does not exist. Unfortunately, the internet has become the tool of those who want to generalize to entire populations: all cops are racists, the reason young men of color are 21 time more likely to be shot by police than white young men is that they commit more crimes. Neither of those things is true, not even remotely.
The Internet is also lighting up once again with commitments of “thoughts and prayers.” I suppose these things are sincere expressions from those who at very least, want to do something. But I also wonder if thoughts and prayers have simply become the instant conditioned response to events that really should disturb us deeply.
There’s something happening here, and while I imagine the problem has multiple causalities and the solutions are equally complex, at the core of it is a breakdown of community. Far from loving our neighbors, we are conditioned to be suspicious and fearful of them, and that is no way to live. We need more than just thought and prayer, we must strive to live in a way that draws us to one another rather than keeping the other at arm’s length. Paul encourages the Colossians to “lead lives worthy of the Lord.”
It is easily said, not so easily done. It is not so easily done because it demands that we make ourselves vulnerable, less insulated, and more available to each other as a way of building community. It is so much easier to point fingers, identify the culprit and then distance us from it all as someone else’s problem. It is so much harder to accept that all of the victims are us; all of the shooters are us; these things are happening in our family, we do not have the luxury of ignoring it. “There’s battle lines being drawn/nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.”
Here are words of peace from Chinese Philosopher Lao Tzu, 6th Century BCE:
If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.