Because if I have to understand what would drive and motivate actions like Dallas, to understand your experience and your viewpoint, you can keep both. I neither desire, nor will I attempt to understand you or meet you where you are. Where you are is evil and of the Enemy.
Don't you dare revel in the loss of life, because now the rest of "us", know what it is like to be black, brown or anything else. That kind of sickness and disturbed logic is what drives the cycle of crime and poverty. It is beneath human dignity and contemptible in the eyes of reasonable men.
Don't you dare try to justify anything to me, except how much we need to pray and beg God to heal this land.
Don't you dare try to connect this evil in Dallas, with the evil anywhere else. Not only aren't they connected, except in mercenary evil, they are not comparable or complicit.
Don't you dare. Just don't.
Pray that no more people die.
Pray that somehow, this mob of anger that our communities of color have become, develop leadership and purpose.
Pray that we try to act like the Americans we would be if we kept to our ideals and principles, and stop being African American, Hispanic or whatever else. We are all just Americans, by the grace of God. I have been the other places, help yourself, go there and enjoy being what they are. You will never be happy you made that trade. But, it is your decision, one way or the other. And your responsibility to live correctly with it. If you are staying here, act like you have a stake, because you do.
Pray that some sanity and sense returns to our discourse and our interactions.
Lives are not black, blue or all. They are transient, temporary, fragile and irreplaceably valuable, period.
Lives are not destined from birth, they are informed by influence and surroundings, and made by decisions.
Fate does not exist, no one is fated to be or do anything. The possibility exists for all of us, to be our best selves. And the failure to achieve that can never be the responsibility of anyone else, but yourself.
You cannot be what others make you, you can only be what you decide you are. If you decide that you are a good person, and will act that way, you will be. If you decide that you don't care, and that whatever it is you want to do, regardless of consequences or pain, is okay, you will be a dangerous and deadly thing that is not human, but mostly animal.
There are many people dead, across this nation, last night, from violence, crime, and the bad and tragic decisions that were made. Our decisions do not affect only ourselves, but no one outside of you can make the decision for you.
We have lost our understanding that regardless of our background, our history, our past, we are still ultimately in charge of and responsible for our actions. We have almost finished creating the next generation of this nation that thinks someone or something else is responsible for and accountable for their decisions. It is the "Man", the "system", the "Hood", the childhood, the parenting, the drugs, the insert all other excuses here. And, it is all wrong. It is your fault, what you do. Whether you wear a badge, baggy pants that show all of your ass, Armani suits, or military uniform, you are the ultimate responsibility for you.
It is not okay, because you had a hard childhood. I have sympathy for your struggle, but it does not excuse criminal or anti-social behavior. It is not okay for any reason. Even if you are mentally ill, you are responsible. You may not be liable for punishment because you could not reason out the consequences, but you are still responsible.
That is what struck me this morning, as I woke up and read news articles and watched video of Dallas. People, multiple people, chose to get weapons and go shoot police officers, who were ensuring that peaceful protest of police killings was not disturbed. Just as the officers that pulled their trigger in Louisiana and Minnesota, those people, just as full of hate as the cops in the other shootings are assumed to be, are responsible for their actions.
We are responsible for our decisions now. All of us, every single American, now gets to decide what they will do. Will you do nothing, but feel bad? Will you do something to make the situation better? Will you pray for peace and healing? Will you get involved in something positive for the community? Will you egg on the bitterness of others? Will you repeat and accept partial knowledge and assumption as fact? Will you knowingly aid and perpetuate the continuing violence and unrest?
We all have a choice in every situation. We all have the responsibility for that choice. We are all informed by our past, by our upbringing, by our history. But, none of us will ever be anything but responsible and accountable for what we decide. That is the ultimate message of the laws we have written, and the message of the faith we practice, whatever that faith may be.
It is not about gun control. Don't you dare cheapen your intellect by assuming that controlling guns removes the responsibility for actions taken by those wielding guns.
It is not about police limitations. Don't you dare cheapen the lives of all who died by assuming that if we limited the police severely, we remove the responsibility for our actions and choices, police and civilian.
It is not about race. Don't you dare cheapen your humanity by assuming that if we just had less of any type of people that would remove responsibility for actions of hate.
It is not about anything, but the choice to do evil. It is that simple. And evil comes in all colors, all religions, all nations and all situations. Don't you dare assume anything explains the evil you do, or think, or say. Because your very nature, your very humanity exposes the lie there, and will destroy you from the inside.
Don't you dare ignore this. Don't. Just don't.
God Loves Us All. Why Don't We?
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