Last Tuesday I tuned into the late afternoon news to hear the verdict of the Derek Chauvin trial read. I honestly didn’t know which way it would go and was pleasantly surprised when he was convicted on all three counts. I say pleasantly surprised, not because I hate Derek Chauvin, or wish ill of him, but because he was held accountable for his actions. He was held accountable by the state court system, according to the judgement of his peers, after the testimony of many observers including his own chief of police. This seemed all quite proper to me and I naively assumed that due to these criteria being met, there would not be a lot of controversy over the ruling. Silly me.

Let me just jump to the point, if you are active in a church and you keep finding yourself wondering where all the young people are, or why your church keeps shrinking, it might be helpful to remember that Facebook is a public arena. And it regularly projects a very ugly, and very uncompelling image of the Christian faith.

My wife alerted me to the fact that there was controversy around the verdict (from Christians) so I sniffed around Facebook a bit. Indeed, it was ugly. I didn’t dig deep, but what I was looking for in a Christian perspective was nowhere to be found. So here are two important points that I have yet to see show up in the (Christian) reactions to the Derek Chauvin verdict. I think they are both rather important.

First, the simplest statement of Christian faith is, “Jesus is Lord.” Which is the same as saying that Jesus is King, or that Jesus is Master. This is a political statement. It isn’t a statement that aligns us with the Right or the Left, or with Democracy or Socialism, or any political ideology we find on earth. It is a statement that should align us with the Lordship of Jesus over our lives, and with the ethics that he taught. It is a statement that will set us (at least partially) against every earthly system of politics because they are all sinful, broken and incomplete. Christ followers are called to pledge their allegiance to Jesus the King above all else. And this has political implications. It must.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say that the Church should stay out of politics. And I honestly don’t get it. Our politicians regularly make statements of faith and align themselves with the Christian religion, using it for their political advantage. If politicians don’t stay out of the Church, why should the Church stay out of politics? When the Church doesn’t engage with politics then we are left with a Church that is run by politics, because the politicians have no qualms with interpreting the Christian religion according to their own agendas. I am amazed at how many Christians I have met that seem to think that Jesus wants them to be rich and successful Americans who are free to defend their own individual rights and property using any amount of force they feel like. I’m not sure what Gospel they are reading. If the Church is going to matter to the world, it must have an opinion on the politics of the world. 

Secondly, Jesus (the King) teaches His followers to love their neighbors as themselves. This is really hard, maybe impossible. But Jesus also teaches His followers to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecute them. He teaches them to forgive others no matter how egregious the offense. Christ followers are called to be humble and repentant and to approach their fellow humans with mercy and compassion, viewing every other human being as their neighbor, who was made in the image of God.

In my mind, this means that the Church should mourn with the family of George Floyd and seek ways to work towards greater justice for all people, especially the marginalized and oppressed in our society. (Which includes the Black community.) And it also means that Christians should refuse to vilify or demonize Derek Chauvin. I am glad that the courts will hold him accountable for his actions, because that makes it so much easier for the Church to reach out to him and his family with mercy and compassion and even possibly forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t mean he isn’t accountable for what he did. It does mean that Christ followers cannot dehumanize him for what he did. (This works the other way around too. No matter what choices George Floyd made in his life. No matter what his relationship with drugs was. He still didn’t deserve to die that night. Christ followers cannot dehumanize him for what he did either.)

My advisor in seminary would often say, “the challenge of being human is fighting evil without becoming evil.” I think he’s right. Dehumanization leads to evil actions. Racism leads to evil actions. Pride leads to evil actions. Jesus fought evil with good. He used forgiveness to defuse hatred. He used humility to expose the corruption of power. He used mercy to reject rejection. In other words, he fought evil without becoming evil.

We have all gone down the path of fighting with others, online or in person, on the terms that they set. We are practiced in returning evil with evil. It is our most basic reflex. Where has it gotten us?

What if we tried to respond to evil with forgiveness, mercy, and humility? It won’t be easy or comfortable. But are we really so enamored with the society that we live in right now that we can’t risk trying something different? I mean, really, what do we have to lose?