Is Jordan Edwards really my neighbor?
You see, we can’t us-them this thing. As long as these sons are their sons, as long as these streets are their streets, as long as these deaths are their deaths, we show that our majority-culture mindset has immunized us to the depths of tragedy and travesty playing out before us. Numbed in this way, we don’t feel what we ought, because we can’t, and we don’t do what we should, because we won’t.
~~~~~
OURS
No, until these sons are our sons — until their brother is our brother and their neighbor our neighbor and their friend our friend — we are all living in communities unworthy of the name.
When officers are gunned down in the line of duty, they are our officers, our sworn protectors, our bravest and finest who lay down their lives so that others might live. They’re ours, so we feel it, and we mourn it, and we marshall all our strength to make right what went wrong. This is good, and it is right, and we all know it.
And so it must also be that when an unarmed 15-year-old African American boy is shot in the head in Mesquite, Texas, he is our son, our student, our neighbor. And until he is ours, heart-wrenchingly ours, we are still — no matter how loudly and cleverly we protest — the priest, the Levite, and the lawyer, all rolled into one.
~~~~~
MINE
I did it months ago, and if I’m worth anything as a parent, I’ll have to do it again. I’ll tell my four black sons and daughters about the shooting of another young unarmed black man. I’ll do it because it’s parenting malpractice to send your minority children into a racially polarized society assuming that all is right with the world.
So we’ll talk: “No, son, you can’t wear your hood up unless it’s raining or freezing cold.” “No, son, you can’t go out in the woods behind the house and shoot your BB gun by yourself.” “No, buddy, just because you do what’s right doesn’t mean you’re safe. You need to do more.”
Every parent walks the line between scaring and preparing their children. I’m learning how to do it with my boys, and I’m asking my African American friends as many questions as I can so I can see the world through their eyes and prepare my children for the hazy grey ethics of black-and-white America. I’m asking rapid-fire questions because my children are growing up in a trigger-happy world, and they’re growing up faster than I can learn.
There are so many things to tell them, and most of it isn’t simple, which is hard for kids to understand. It’s hard for me to understand.
So I’ll tell them that we’re blessed to live in a nation where the police are mostly good people, because we are. I’ll tell them they should respect the police and obey the law, because they should. And I’ll tell them that they need to be really careful, in some really specific ways, because of some really sinful realities arrayed against them, because they must.
But what will I say when one of my boys turns to me (again) at the dinner table, his big brown eyes lit with fear, and asks, “Do you think that will happen to me?”
Well, I’m a word guy — I’ve worked with words my entire adult life — but I already know what will happen, because it’s happened before. I’ll stumble around in the recesses of my mind, rummaging through the English library I’ve supposedly stored up for teachable moments like these, moments when I’m called upon to prove a father’s worth. Then I’ll try to string together a few limp syllables and hope they can bear the weight of what I’m trying to say about the world my son will be entering, on his own, far too soon.
~~~~~
HIS
Clearly, I care about this incident, and about this issue. But not just because I’m a white father with black sons who sees their faces and their futures in Jordan Edwards’ yearbook photo. That’s the most visceral reason, of course. But that’s not the only reason or the main reason.
The main reason we must see every black boy not just as theirs but as ours is that every black boy is his. “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight” is a line we must never stop singing, because every child — every person — is made in the image and likeness of God himself.
Sinners can only be saved from our sins and adopted into God’s redeemed family through faith in Christ. We are born sinners, and we only become his redeemed children through his forgiveness offered through Christ alone. But every human being born into this world is immediately and permanently God’s child through creation. As such, we share a common heritage, dignity, value, and purpose. As human beings, we’re in this together, and we’re his together.
Perhaps we need to stop the cleverness of saying imago Dei in Latin until we’ve rooted the truth itself deep in the soil of our psyches where it bears real fruit.
Until we believe that these sons are his, we will not mourn them as ours. As long as these boys are not ours, they will only be theirs. And as long as these boys are only theirs, we are violently separating what God has joined together: our shared humanity as image-bearers.
So I invite you to join in mourning, and praying, and reflecting, and responding, and strategizing, doing whatever good you can with whatever influence you have.
Why? Because humanity is one family, and these are our sons.
***
This article originally appeared at DavidAGundersen.com.
