By Marcus Stringer
The gruesome murder happened in the "Land of the 'free' and home of the 'brave'", it was perpetrated when "All men are created equal" nodded it's head in sleep. Three men offered a ride to a man walking home at night. They beat him to a pulp then chained him to the tailgate of their pick-up truck. After two long country miles through the woods, body parts strewn along the path of death – heaven said enough. Sins were found out but too late for dear brother James Byrd Jr. It is unknown if this was a copycat or payback of a similar crime involving a white American soldier in the US-Somali war just a few years ago.
High-ranking government officials of science in apartheid South Africa turn God-given knowledge and consciousness to work. What is their work? Creating infections and disease, semi-final solutions, to selectively impact dark pigmented people.
What do these scenes have in common? For one, I would not be able to watch them had they appeared on a TV show or movie I was watching. Perhaps I would not even watch the show, knowing that such violence would be depicted. Thanks to mom and dad, I still have a low tolerance for violence, gruesome violence in particular.
Mom and dad didn't allow violence or horror to be watched on televisions in their house. Friends laugh, when I jump up and run from a room, or quickly cover my eyes at the face of deadly violence. I've walk out of movie theaters or refused to watch theater movies when violence seemed to be glorified trivialized or "humorized". Maybe my friends are right to laugh at me, maybe I'm over-reacting to something that isn't real. All that television and movies are, is make-believe and acting, right? I don't say this to bring glory to myself, but to say that perhaps my mother and father were on to something. In fact, I know they were.
Violence is hurtful. To make humor of violence is to be on the road to desensitization and dehumanization. It is a warning sign that we are so many fewer miles away from returning to a barbaric and chaotic existence. And this fact should bring concern and righteous indignation to us all. Yet some of us are confused.
Just days before, the television minister and African diamond-mine owner, Pat Robertson warned that God's wrath might be visited upon the city of Orlando Florida. What did Orlando do to cause God's wrath? Was it beating other beings and dragging them or stomping them to death? Was it scheming to use infection and disease against others or out right violent attacks of religious, ethnic, or social cleansing? No, the City of Orlando's offense was that it permitted gay pride flags to be flown on city light posts during the Gay Pride celebration.
Some of us don't know the difference between love – particularly same-gender love – and hate. They claim that sin is sin, talking their heads off against so-called sexual sins, yet their breath is lost and cannot support speech when people – in vicious glee – are killing other people. Do we mean to say that God can tolerate ferocious human behavior more than people of the same gender loving and caring for each other?
Pat Robertson warned that natural disasters small and great (even to a falling meteor) could come upon the city of Orlando. Perhaps God has bad aim, but God's wrath might know a better target in the U.S. White House and Congress or even Las Vegas as one acquaintance of mine suggested. The whole earth could use God sending a hurricane or natural calamity to any person who unfairly targets and abuses another person.
Maybe we wouldn't behave so badly. How long, oh God must we wait for your judgement to establish justice on earth?
Yet some of us remain desensitized and confused. Unable to honor the profound difference between love and hate, or love and violence – we watch from the sidelines as another drop of cruelty and violence falls into the cup of evil. Again I think to myself, I don't want to be a part of this, I don't even want to see it, I'm leaving the room.
A child-care provider looses control of her temper and turns on a child in her care. Instead of shaking the infant to death, this sitter stomps the life out of it. The horror!
Shooting Violence in Baltimore