Worth your time

This is what I have been trying to say, less well. 

It was posted by the former president of "my" college, where I taught 21 years. 

Worth a read and some methodical reflection. The best comments I have read on the subject

Written by James Bell

I’ve waited to speak about the recent tradegy surrounding ICE, the protests, and the killings because as a pastor, it feels like there is a new moral outrage demanding immediate commentary almost every week.

But immediate reaction is rarely the same thing as wisdom.

So I have taken time to read, to listen to people I disagree with, and to think. And what I feel most is not just anger. It is sorrow.

The Hebrew word for justice is mishpat (מִשְׁפָּט). Mishpat is uncomfortable in polarized cultures because it refuses to fully side with anyone.

It critiques the right when authority crushes mercy.

It critiques the left when compassion ignores responsibility.

Justice answers to God, not to movements

And mishpat is exactly what we are struggling to practice as a nation.

Some people can watch the same videos of a deadly encounter between authorities and a protester and walk away with completely opposite conclusions. That alone should remind us that complex situations require careful thought, not instant certainty.

We have been so shaped by tribal loyalty that admitting a second truth now feels like treason and we have lost the ability to hold more than one truth at the same time.

Our deeper issue is not simply disagreement but reductionism we reduce complex moral realities into single, self-serving narratives.

This tradgedy must first be acknowledged as a human tragedy. A man exercising his rigjts in the public ended up dead. That reality alone should sober anyone in society. Regardless of his career, politcial ideology, or the circumstances , he was a human being made in the image of God. His life carries inherent dignity that cannot be reduced to political rhetoric. To treat it that way is to diminish our own moral responsibilities.

At the same time, any honest framework for justice must recognize the necessity of law and order. Scripture describes governing authorities as servants of God tasked with restraining evil and preserving societal stability (Romans 13).

History has shown us repeatedly that when authority collapses, the result is not compassion but chaos and conditions where the vulnerable suffer most. The existence of authority is not itself oppression; it is a structure meant, at its best, to prevent greater harm.

A wise response must be able to hold both truths without collapsing It into ideology. We can grieve a human life while still affirming the need for lawful order. Anything less is not justice. It is partisanship.

Both of those statements can be true.

But we have trained ourselves to believe that acknowledging one automatically denies the other. That is not wisdom. That is tribalism.

What concerns me most is not only what happened in that moment of violence. It is what is happening inside us. We are becoming people who process everything through political identity before we process it through conscience. We are quicker to defend our side than to defend human dignity. We are more fluent in outrage than in discernment.

Here are several ways im trying to let truth speak into balanced judgment in this issue.

If a human life is lost and your first instinct is to defend a idealogy instead of grieve a human life, something in us is out of order. Human dignity must come before political loyalty. (Genesis 1:27)

If you assume every use of force by authorities is automatically justified, you are not being principled; you are being uncritical. Power requires accountability precisely because it is power. (Proverbs 31:8–9)

If you assume every action by law enforcement is evil by default, you are not being compassionate; you are being simplistic. Authority is a biblical concept, even when it is imperfect. (Romans 13:1–4)

If your theology only challenges the other side and never your own, you are not being biblical; you are being selective. Scripture critiques every tribe, including yours. (Hebrews 4:12)

If you can speak strongly about order but weakly about mercy, or strongly about rights but weakly about authorities, your framework is incomplete. Justice in Scripture always includes both. (Micah 6:8)

Mishpat requires patience. It requires us to slow down long enough to ask better questions. It requires us to admit that we do not know everything. It requires us to care more about what is right than about being right.

Most of all, it requires us to see people as people again.

A society does not fall apart first because of bad policies. It falls apart when its people lose the ability to recognize the humanity of those they disagree with.

When we replace human complexity with tribal ideologies, turn pain into political talking points, and interpret Scripture through partisan lenses .

That is when the brokeness we see is no longer in our political systems, but in our collctive humanity.

We will not move toward healing by pretending hard questions do not exist. But we also will not move toward healing if we cannot hold justice, accountability, mercy, and order in the same moral frame.

That kind of balance is not weakness. It is maturity.

And right now, maturity is exactly what our nation is lacking.