Mohler: The Central Tragedy of this Case Remains—Trayvon Martin Belongs to Us All

[handerson]

I’m curious about the way conservative evangelicals have almost uniformly spoken about this from a race angle. I can’t help but think that this is collective “white guilt” talking. We do have problems with racism in our country; we have a horrible past and the church has been a big part of it. But to read this story through racial eyes says a lot more about the people reading it and less about the actual events.

I’m more concerned about a culture of violence that teaches young men to solve conflict through physical force.

It’s the main stream media, President Obama, and blacks who have made this all about race. Had it not been for the news media pushing this story continually for the past few months, few people would even know who Trevyon Martin was, or what had happened that night.

I don’t understand how you can say that the Church has been a big part of racism in this country. Where do you get this idea?

By Todd Starnes

A man who says he was jogging alongside of a road when three black men abducted and beat him claims the alleged attack was in retaliation for George Zimmerman’s acquittal, police in Senatobia, Miss. told Fox News.

Police Chief Steve Holts told Fox News the alleged victim, who is white, was jogging Sunday night along Highway 51 when, he said, the suspects pulled over and ordered him to get inside their car.

“One of them asked, ‘Do you know who Trayvon Martin was?’” Holts quoted the man as saying. At that point, the men in the vehicle allegedly attacked him.

The man, who the chief described as a young resident of the area, was treated at a local hospital.

Memphis television station WREG reported the assailants allegedly told the victim, “This is for Trayvon.” The television station and The Democrat newspaper reported the jogger was badly beaten and later dropped off on a road between Senatobia and Coldwater, Miss.

Holts declined to release any other information but said officers are searching for three black males in a white, four-door vehicle.

“We want to find out why this happened,” the chief said, while also cautioning local residents to “be safe.”

The police department is urging local residents who might have information to contact Crimestoppers at 662-301-1111.

Count me on those who were less than impressed by this post from Mohler. He parrots the media portrayal of Martin as a “smiling kid.” Yes, I’m sure he smiled just plenty, but there are lots of other pictures where he was doing anything but smiling. And the word “kid” to me brings to mind a small youngster who would have been crushed by someone the likes of George Zimmerman. However, the convenience store video shows that the 17-year-old was relatively tall.

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/video?id=8666911

[Greg Linscott] All of those things may be true, Jay. I doubt very much that Mohler is unaware of them.

Still, marijuana, personal problems, etc. don’t definitively answer all the uncertainties. They certainly don’t decisively justify everything that took place. However, Mohler nowhere that I can see argues that TM is a completely innocent victim.

The story has highlighted (properly or not) race issues in this country. So, that being the case, an article from a leader like this is not taking the opportunity to explain why this case isn’t really about race. He’s trying to address the problem that this story as brought into prominence- to take ownership of it and be part of the solution.

I see your point, Greg. I’m not as optimistic that Mohler will be able to achieve being a part of the solution - I feel as though he may have made it worse by wading into the morass - but I hope I’m wrong.

I just lost all respect for Albert Mohler. Sounds to me like he is just another mouthpiece of the Liberal media.

He should have just remained silent on this issue. Instead, he writes something that not only distorts the truth of the case, but makes him sound like someone who is trying to be politically correct, in order to appease some of the blacks that might be in his congregation.

He writes, “But there is one talk I never had to have with my son, and my father never had to have with me. That is the talk about what to do when the police pull you over and you are a young black man. The talk about what to do when you are eyed suspiciously by people just because you are a young black male. The talk about how to act and how to respond when people watch just to see if you are trouble.”

With those sentences, he is pretty much expressing what he really thinks about this case. That Zimmerman targeted Martin because of the color of his skin.

This piece of writing is irresponsible at best, and is something that I would expect to read in some liberal owned newspaper. It is shameful that someone who is supposed to be a teacher/theologian, and known for precision in his writing, would publish this article.

[christian cerna]

I don’t understand how you can say that the Church has been a big part of racism in this country. Where do you get this idea?

Because historically, the church in the US has not led the fight against racism. In fact, they have resisted it. More sadly, the more conservative elements of Christianity resisted the most. Consider Bob Jones University which refused to admit African Americans until many years after state schools did. Ironically, for all the talking on our side about how evil the world is, the world was more right than conservative Christians on this issue during that time.

One of the reasons Billy Graham was so controversial was because he refused to allow racial barriers at his events. That was during the 1950’s I think. You don’t hear much about that fight today, but Billy Graham was certainly more right on that issue than the more conservative elements of the church.

The direction of the comments in this thread is a case in point for why Mohler needed to write the article he did. At this stage, the verdict is in. Nothing more will be accomplished (if indeed it would have otherwise) by debating the finer points of character of the parties involved. There is going to be, however, resentment, finger pointing, and yes, violence that ensues. Do we meet that with scorn, contempt, and retreat? How does “weep with those who weep” look in this situation?

To be blunt, do Christian white people really need more reinforcement from someone like Mohler that “all those” black people are violent, lazy, drug-addicted thugs who are more responsible for their own destruction than not, or do they need reminders that this is, regardless of skin color or character flaws, a tragedy that took out one of our own, and that this is a problem we need to take responsibility for instead of blaming others for not taking theirs like we think they should?

[christian cerna]

I just lost all respect for Albert Mohler. Sounds to me like he is just another mouthpiece of the Liberal media.

Such a travesty…50 years of Gospel ministry erased because Al Mohler has been revealed to be a closet Liberal media fanboy!

I utterly fail to see what Pastor Harding’s and Jay’s last posts have to do with Mohler’s point.

[DavidO]

I utterly fail to see what Pastor Harding’s and Jay’s last posts have to do with Mohler’s point.

…they illustrate why it needed to be made.

[Greg Linscott]

The direction of the comments in this thread is a case in point for why Mohler needed to write the article he did. At this stage, the verdict is in. Nothing more will be accomplished (if indeed it would have otherwise) by debating the finer points of character of the parties involved. There is going to be, however, resentment, finger pointing, and yes, violence that ensues. Do we meet that with scorn, contempt, and retreat? How does “weep with those who weep” look in this situation?

To be blunt, do Christian white people really need more reinforcement from someone like Mohler that “all those” black people are violent, lazy, drug-addicted thugs who are more responsible for their own destruction than not, or do they need reminders that this is, regardless of skin color or character flaws, a tragedy that took out one of our own, and that this is a problem we need to take responsibility for instead of blaming others for not taking theirs like we think they should?

That is absolutely right. If white Christians got off of their current talking points of trying to prove Zimmerman innocent and blaming the media and spent a bit more time trying to understand why black people are upset with the verdict, it would be a very different world.

I know very dedicated (and conservative) black Christians who are devastated by the verdict. Rather than just calling them mistaken, maybe a bit of trying to understand their perspective makes sense. By the way, I am not black and I am not saying Zimmerman is guilty. But regardless, there is more to this than meets the eye. It goes way deeper than this case.

Touché, Greg.

Oh, Linscott, I mean. Too many Gregs!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014241278873233945045786081825502470…

George Zimmerman’s acquittal of murder charges in a Florida court has been followed by predictable calls for America to have a “national conversation” about this or that aspect of the case. President Obama wants to talk about gun control. Civil-rights leaders want to talk about racial profiling. Others want to discuss how the American criminal justice system supposedly targets black men.

All of which is fine. Just don’t expect these conversations to be especially illuminating or honest. Liberals in general, and the black left in particular, like the idea of talking about racial problems, but in practice they typically ignore the most relevant aspects of any such discussion.

Any candid debate on race and criminality in this country would have to start with the fact that blacks commit an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes. African-Americans constitute about 13% of the population, yet between 1976 and 2005 blacks committed more than half of all murders in the U.S. The black arrest rate for most offenses—including robbery, aggravated assault and property crimes—is typically two to three times their representation in the population. The U.S. criminal-justice system, which currently is headed by one black man (Attorney General Eric Holder) who reports to another (President Obama), is a reflection of this reality, not its cause.

“High rates of black violence in the late twentieth century are a matter of historical fact, not bigoted imagination,” wrote the late Harvard Law professor William Stuntz in “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice.” “The trends reached their peak not in the land of Jim Crow but in the more civilized North, and not in the age of segregation but in the decades that saw the rise of civil rights for African Americans—and of African American control of city governments.”

The left wants to blame these outcomes on racial animus and “the system,” but blacks have long been part of running that system. Black crime and incarceration rates spiked in the 1970s and ’80s in cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia, under black mayors and black police chiefs. Some of the most violent cities in the U.S. today are run by blacks.

…

The homicide rate claiming black victims today is seven times that of whites, and the George Zimmermans of the world are not the reason. Some 90% of black murder victims are killed by other blacks.

So let’s have our discussions, even if the only one that really needs to occur is within the black community. Civil-rights leaders today choose to keep the focus on white racism instead of personal responsibility, but their predecessors knew better.

“Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We’ve got to face that. And we’ve got to do something about our moral standards,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a congregation in 1961. “We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can’t keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves.”

I know very dedicated (and conservative) black Christians who are devastated by the verdict. Rather than just calling them mistaken, maybe a bit of trying to understand their perspective makes sense.

I completely respect that racial inequity exists in our society. I completely respect that I will never feel it the way a black person will. But I cannot respect those—black or white—who want Zimmerman to pay for generations of racial inequity. The core problem of racism is failing to treat people as individuals and judging them on their personal merits. Zimmerman was put on trial for 2nd degree murder. He was judged as an individual and deemed not guilty.

So this devastation mystifies me. It’s almost like saying: “The system is unjust to black youth, therefore it must be equally unjust to Zimmerman.” We do not solve problems of injustice by perpetuating more injustice.

Did Zimmerman act impetuously? Probably.

Did he lack wisdom? Yes.

Should he be held responsible in some way? My gut instinct is yes.

Did he murder Trayvon Martin because of wide-spread racial inequity in the US? No.

And he should not be put on trial for society’s sins any more than a black youth should be presumed to be a troublemaker by merit of being black.

So, have things improved since the quote from MLKJr? Is it helping for us to keep pointing out statistics that the people with the problem (obviously not us) need to get it in gear?

The observation Mohler makes is a simple one- the central tragedy is a national one, not the problem of one demographic or another to solve. Christians in the nation with the problem- you and me- need to see how they can be part of the solution.