Pastor's Blog: Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right
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The topic that’s been on everyone’s mind this week has been the reaction that has taken place across the country to what we can all agree was the senseless and tragic death of George Floyd on Monday a week ago in Minneapolis. The primary reason it’s been on ours is because of how the reaction spread to Birmingham, as on this past Sunday what began as a peaceful protest turned into an assault on downtown businesses and on members of the media who were there to report on the situation.
To their credit, Mayor Woodfin, along with the City of Birmingham’s chief of police and fire marshal, held a news conference the next day at which they pledged to restore some semblance of law and order to our community. Let’s pray not only for them as they seek to do so, but also for leaders in other communities who are finding that task much more difficult.
I’ve thought and prayed a lot about the situation, and I keep coming back to a conviction that got hard-wired into me a long, long time ago: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
I must tell you that I really have wrestled with this response. There’s a part of me that tells myself, “That’s a part of your white privilege. You’re just being insensitive to the pain that others are going through.” But while I don’t want for a moment to silence those voices, at the same time, I don’t think that’s entirely the case. Something else is going on inside of me. So, I still come back to what has been for me a foundational principle: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Let me be clear. What the Minneapolis police officers did to George Floyd was not right, regardless of what happened prior to the video. But then neither has the looting and destruction that has happened in its aftermath. That’s not right either.
Yet it’s too easy for me to stop at that conclusion. If I don’t do anything in response to such a wrong, that may well be a wrong in itself! So, what options do I have left? What can I do in my own life to right such a wrong? I’m sure many of you have been asking yourself the same question. Certainly, we can pray, which I’m confident most of us have already been doing. But “thoughts and prayers” seems to be just a hollow phrase that too often gets thrown around in these kinds of situations. There has to be something more we can do. So, here’s what I’ve come up with.
We can listen to the voices of those on society’s margins. That sounds simple enough, until we look honestly at our tendency to want to answer those voices too quickly with justifications and rationalizations and other forms of “white-splaining.” If, as Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “riot is the language of the unheard,” then maybe those of us in the majority community might make our greatest contribution by taking the time to listen seriously and empathetically to the pain that our African-American brothers and sisters are weary from shouldering. We may well be shocked at how positively our genuine listening will be received.
We can also act respectfully toward our neighbors and not patronizingly or condescendingly. As someone who still has the literal silver spoon he was born with, in my more honest moments I know my tendency to feel superior to others who weren’t fortunate enough to have come into this world as I did on at least second base. The older I get, the more I have come to realize that even if I do find a way to move from second to third base, I still won’t be able to make it home unless someone at the plate drives me in the rest of the way. At times, that person looks different from me; and at other times, he or she is on the base paths, and it’s my responsibility to do what I can to drive them in. I would do well (and rightly) to respect that reality.
Lastly, we can take whatever measures are necessary to avoid contributing to the systemic racism that exists in our society today, which if you don’t think is a thing is a good place for you to begin. I think of the slurs toward others I have not bothered to correct and the insensitive jokes, stories, and social media posts I have too often tolerated with deafening silence. To some that may seem to be only a baby step, but as we all know, babies must learn to take such steps before they can know how to walk more purposefully and uprightly.
Speaking for myself, I know this work will take me the rest of my life here on earth, but with God’s help somewhere along the way I hope to learn more fully what Simon Peter learned that day he followed the Spirit’s leading to the house of Cornelius, the Roman centurion. “God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation God accepts those that fear Him and work for righteousness” (Acts 10:34-35), which may well be just another way of saying that God accepts anyone who in the face of any wrong always responds not with another wrong, but instead by acting in the right.
“Now let the fear of the LORD be on you…for with the LORD our God there is no injustice or partiality or bribery" (2 Chronicles 19:7).