Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot
and killed on August 9, 2014, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
It set off weeks of protestagainst policing that easily targets black men.
Willie James Jennings, writing in Religion
Dispatches in December 2014, after a grand jury decided not to indict the
police officer, expressed disgust over Christianity he called “sick” that is at
ease with violence in the name of law and order. He said, “Too often,
Christians…have given sanctuary to the spirit of fear, commending a form of
policing that makes violence a surgeon’s scalpel, imagining our safety in the
illusion of its measured use.” He warned that, “Violence knows no measure.”
The Philippine National Police has recently
released the number of killed in the Philippine government’s war on drugs from
July 1 until December 1, 2016. The number of deaths has totaled to 5,845. Of
this number, 2,004 were killed during police operations, and 3,841 are victims of
extrajudicial vigilante-style killing. An average of 39 people are killed EVERY
DAY over the last five months in drug-related incidents.
These numbers are staggering and have reached the
levels we have seen of deaths during the whole duration of martial law. And
they are increasing by the day! If the trend continues, at the same time next
year we will see about 20,000 people killed in the government’s war on drugs.
The government has hidden behind the “presumption
of regularity” in the performance of duties in the police operations that resulted
in 2,004 deaths. This has stopped police investigation except for the most egregious
cases, like the Espinosa killing inside Leyte’s sub-provincial jail in Baybay.
(Even in this case, the President quickly absolved the police officers involved
and even admitted having a hand in keeping them in position despite their previous
connections to the drug trade.) The rest of the victims in the incidents where the
police are not purportedly involved are filed as “Deaths Under Investigation.” Few,
if any, have been arrested or indicted in any DUI cases.
If this is not a situation of impunity in our
country, I don’t know what is!
As Jennings would say, it would be a sick
Christianity if it remains at ease with violence and killings in the name of
war on drugs.
Killing is never a Christian value. Violence in
the Old Testament (genocide, infanticide, capital punishment, you name it) is
turned over by the gospel of love that Jesus propagated and lived by, modeling what
it should be like for followers in his Kingdom. Jesus did not come to destroy
the law but to fulfill it, which found its achievement by his sacrifice on the
cross. The Messiah who died to offer salvation even for his enemies cannot be
at ease with the rate of killings we’re seeing today in our country.
Everyone deserves salvation and enjoys equal value
in God’s sight no matter how atrocious their life choices have been. We are all
created as image bearers of God and object of his eternal love. Because of Christ,
we cannot align with any government that diminishes human life, even in the name
of law and order.
To kill is not part of the Christian arsenal in
our mission to transform communities. We should be in the forefront of
defending everyone’s right to live and be changed by God’s love. We should
reject the idea that someone has passed the line of incorrigibility and deserves
to die. Remember that with God nothing is impossible! The gospel is not meant
to condemn and punish, but to restore and heal.
Sick Christianity would gloss over the tough
demands of love and would lamely acquiesce to killings in the name of tough law
enforcement to lick society’s drug problem even in the absence of credible
evidence that such strategy has ever worked anywhere in the world. And at the
rate it is bungling its job so far there is no indication at all that the
Philippine Government could be the shining exception to the global record of
failure of the war on drugs.
Sick Christianity hides behind a (too) narrow reading
of Scriptures that purports to mandate that the only form of political
engagement available to Christians is, one, ‘to pray’ for the government, and,
two, ‘to submit’ (sometimes misread as ‘to obey’) to authorities, based on two
or three proof texts written in eras so unlike ours.
Such a reading totally misses the message of the
Gospels and Acts, whose core message is a protest to Caesar’s claim that he is
king, because he is not. The good news is that Jesus is the true King!
No one is King today, other than Jesus. Our
elected government has not attained perfection and will never do so to be
spared from criticism and even protest if they do stray and pursue policies and
actions opposed to the values of the Kingdom. God’s instituting of governments
is meant to preserve the good and curtail evil for the benefit of the people. God’s
imprimatur of governments to be instrument of order and the flourishing of humanity
does not provide governments and its officials with immunity from being called
out for their failures in governance and weakness in character.
Indeed, we should fervently pray for and wisely
submit to government. But these critical activities cannot be made to justify
our lack of action in allowing evil to continue.
Every killing bleeds the heart of God. Be it committed
in Mendiola, Mamasapano, Hacienda Luisita and the war on drugs. If it bleeds
the heart of God, it should also bleed ours. Sick Christianity prevents us from
such lament.
