Why the Minneapolis ICE Shooting Is Dividing Christians So Deeply
Cameron (00:01)
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co-host, Cameron McAllister.
Nathan (00:04)
And I'm your co-host, Nathan Rittenhouse. In this episode, we discussed last week's ice shooting in Minneapolis. Obviously a lot of people are saying a lot of things about that. Cameron and I have some commentary on the commentary as it were, but want to lay out some practical things for us to think about as Christians as we process any type of event like this. I think you'll find this helpful and hopefully it leaves you with something.
Practical to do on the other end of this if you appreciate the work that we're doing you can like it You can share it you can subscribe to our content and if you want to support this work you can do so by visiting WWW.toltogether.com
Cameron (00:07)
So if you haven't heard about Renee Nicole Good and what transpired in Minneapolis, you probably haven't been paying too much attention to the news because this has captured the public in a way that few events have recently. And it's strangely reminiscent of events six years ago around the same area. This event happened within a mile of the George Floyd murder as well.
So there are some sites that seem sadly and strangely familiar, but in case you missed it, Renee Goode was, there was a confrontation between Renee Goode, a 37 year old lady who had recently moved from Colorado to Minnesota with her wife. There was a confrontation between her and an ICE agent. Things escalate very quickly. There is so much.
footage of this event out there now. And many of you, I know there's, there is a, mean, many of you listening have probably watched a lot of it, but things escalate and one of the two agents shoots Renee in the face and she succumbed to her injuries. She died. It's a very sad, very sad thing. And then really beyond the bare bones of these facts that I've relayed to you, a lot is disputed.
And even still, think a lot of news agencies have brought in legal experts to weigh in on what happened. And the big question is of course, who is at fault here? Was this agent acting in a way that was legal? Was she an agitator? Was she a person who was a domestic terrorist? These are words that have been used. Did she weaponize her vehicle or was she simply just trying to flee? Did she have to die? These kinds of questions.
Interestingly enough, the legal expertise, those who analyze these kinds of events for a living, all of them said, need a lot more time to pour over this and look at the data very carefully and analyze it very carefully because it simply isn't very clear. It's worth pointing that out.
Nathan (02:20)
And that has been the opinion. And that's
the opinion that has made the news the most. No, that's not. I just made that up.
Cameron (02:28)
Yeah.
So Nathan's being very sarcastic there. Right. So obviously something like that doesn't really play very well in the news. People want headlines and they want a definitive answer. So people are taking sides, of course, and these, of course, fall, they're getting divided along political lines. Once again, this sounds pretty familiar. So why are we bringing this up?
Well, in one sense, it's hard not to. It's hard to get away from the story. And we do talk about current events on Thinking Out Loud. So I think it would be a bit evasive for us not to talk about what has happened here. But we're also going to be our typical Thinking Out Loud selves. And we're going to look at this from a broader perspective as well and consider how this reflects our cultural moment.
why it is so difficult for us in certain places, especially on social media, to speak sensibly about something like this. Nathan, as you've been watching the news and as you've seen this, I'm wondering what your first reactions were when this story broke.
Nathan (03:49)
Well, I mean, anytime somebody dies, it's incredibly sad. ⁓ so I think that's the primary one, but immediately my mind went to the parallels between a whole host of other events where there was, ⁓ federal state, local police, you know, involved in somebody's dying. ⁓ you mentioned joy, George, George Floyd, and immediately there's this massive public outpouring. And then you have a year plus of investigations and more details coming out.
It's really one those things where you can't So much so you can look at it. It's a it's a broken situation is messed up and you say that sad and then Nobody knows but the pressure is there immediately to say this is what I think and why and So I think the the sadness of it for me is that this becomes a ⁓ Roar Shaq test for How people already see see the world structured? ⁓
And it immediately follows, like you said, along the lines of people's pre-existing ideas of what should and shouldn't happen. it's wild the way we pour our own ⁓ hindsight and moral agency into these things. Like, well, this should have happened here and this person should have done this and this should, yeah, but they didn't. mean, so it's there's a sense in which I hate the fact that we're talking about this. Cameron and I, and part of where we're going in this conversation is that
Cameron (05:13)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (05:16)
When we're kind of outlining what are helpful things? Christianly thinking of this is to actually talk to somebody, you know before you spend a whole lot of time Articulating this like on a larger platform and Cameron and I have put in a good amount of time discussing this Starting at the end of last week and then over the weekend Just to to flesh out and process ourselves some of the ideas of what we're seeing here And so we're we're taking we took our own advice and we say, know, like aren't you guys a little late to this conversation? Well
Cameron (05:30)
Thank
Nathan (05:47)
What more can be said other than, well, shoot, somebody died. And then let's take the whole thing into consideration and work from there. But for me, the interesting parts aren't just the video footage of this, that, and the other thing. It's the entire cultural atmosphere and structure in which this takes place that is a sign of brokenness in every direction. ⁓ Not just the choices that two people made.
Cameron (06:07)
Mm-hmm.
I've even seen some thoughtful people, I know Nathan, one of whom first had a very passionate and angry response on social media. Then he came back. I think it was about a day later saying, look, I responded emotionally. was kind of in the heat of the moment, but new facts have come to light. And so I want to own that. And I want to say that I spoke a little bit out of turn here.
I still firmly believe that Renee Good should not have been killed. I still feel real moral disgust at the way this was handled, but I think there are certain legalities here that will nuance my position a little bit more. I really respected him for saying that, especially on social media. I think, yeah, that's a, but all that, I bring that up just because what you mentioned, Nathan, is really important.
Nathan (06:59)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's big.
Cameron (07:09)
It is still a factor. hoping, I'll say a few words about this here, but I'm hopeful that this is going away a little bit. But right now there's still such pressure to have an opinion on something like this and to sound off on it immediately.
Nathan (07:21)
Well, yeah,
so so let me just put my cards on the table on that one. think in past events we've heard silence is violence. Yeah, but a lot of speech is idiotic. So the sometimes silence is wisdom. Like if you don't actually know what you're talking about, not saying something is not. It's it's not being squishy. It's not dodging. It's just like you can't know from 1000 miles away watching one street light, you know security camera.
Cameron (07:30)
Yes.
Nathan (07:51)
It's it bugs me that we can't respect the complexity of everything that happened before during after there's there's so when you're when you have any time you have more than one human and even one human involved in a situation. It's a complicated thing and so I'm not trying to absolve or negate anything. Others just say that we we tend to think. That there's the simple causation kind of thing that is at play here and it's something like this when you look at the video.
And you have the experts say, man, this is really hard to tell from a distance without all the facts. It's pointing out Cameron that what's legal and what's moral are too like, don't always overlap in a tidy way. And so there are going to be people who going to come out and say, this is what should have happened. But we also see the legal precedent here of. And that I think that's the tension that.
Cameron (08:33)
Right.
Yeah.
Nathan (08:47)
that irritates us is that when what's legal and what's moral or what we feel to be or have reasoned or hold religiously to be moral conflicts with what's legal.
it's going to get squishy.
Cameron (09:02)
Yes, that's a huge tension. And I mean, I'll put my cards on the table here. I've looked at the footage extensively. I've looked at lots of different angles, all of it. I've taken that into consideration. It is my, I believe, rational conclusion. Now this is my conclusion. So I'm a fallible human being. I could be wrong. It's my conclusion that Renee Good died unnecessarily. But whether she died, whether
the officer was legally justified in doing what he did, that we're going to spend a lot of time, I mean, that will be determined, that remains to be determined. think, I mean, for what it's worth, think both Nathan and I might be on the same page here. I think it's likely that the ICE agent will be, I don't know what the word would be here, pardoned or that I don't think that this ICE agent is going to face.
Nathan (09:56)
exonerated in some sense.
Cameron (09:59)
exonerated in some sense. I now I think the whole quality of his life is going to be changed. Not just because this was a huge public event, but you kill anybody. Your life is your life is different from that point on. But also I want and what I suspect we'll spend a little time on before I get to the symbolic piece, which I think is really, really important here. Nathan, there's another piece here that you can fill in a little bit, but
Jonathan Haidt's work, particularly his work in The Righteous Mind, is extremely helpful in helping us to understand how we usually divide along political lines. I'd love for you to say a little bit more about that here.
Nathan (10:31)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. So this is,
this is part two of where my mind went immediately. So, ⁓ if you remember back to, it's been a little while since the righteous mind came out. ⁓ and I have a copy here, the subtitle, why good people are divided on, why good people are divided on politics and religion. ⁓ and so certainly he's not writing this from a religious perspective. I think he still considers himself kind of a liberal atheist Jew. And he wrote this book in order to help Democrats win.
Cameron (10:51)
Yeah, I can't remember the year that was published. Yeah.
Nathan (11:07)
uh, yeah, 2012, um, political contest. But one of the things he has this idea of the moral matrix that he takes five categories. So care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. And said, imagine those five as sort of, um, regions of your tongue, like they're, they're taste buds. It's a moral palette in that by disposition, nature, nurture, however you want to slice it.
People do divide out with different proportions and ratios of those components of our moral decision making. So he then can chart that. And this is kind of why this, ⁓ I think became such a big deal is because of the predictability and the factors that play here and how tidy the data holds up is that if you imagine a graph with the X axis being very liberal to the left and very conservative to the right, the
People who are very liberal are going to score very high on care and fairness and very low on loyalty, authority and sanctity. And so the liberal perspective starts high on care and fairness and then tapers off as it moves right. It goes down as it moves toward the right. The people and then the loyalty, sanctity and authority trend upward as it moves toward the right. Now, you know, in the conservative
in this conservative category, all five of those components are at play. So there is a place where all of those lines cross and that's seen to be the conservative position. They do switch. There is a far right version of this where authority, loyalty and sanctity are actually higher than care and fairness. But by and large, the conservative thing is where all of these cross. And he was saying that this is the reason that oftentimes ⁓ liberal or democratic messaging
doesn't work is because it focuses entirely on care and fairness, but doesn't have any loyalty, authority, and sanctity language in its messaging. And so it's missing, you know, 60 % of the moral pallet of most ⁓ Americans. But if you think about that breakdown, and then you look at a situation like this ice shooting in Minneapolis, the people who are going to be super high on the care and fairness side of this are going to immediately see that this was not fair. It wasn't caring.
Cameron (13:08)
.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (13:33)
And I mean, the guy does cuss her as he's shooting her in the head. yeah, there's not a whole lot of empathy, like of goodwill being shown there in the situation. ⁓ So you're going to see if you're high on care and fairness, you're going to see this as clearly she was in the right. She was protecting the innocent. She was protecting the immigrant. She was protecting the down and out. She was rightfully protesting. An authoritarian regime is going to be the way that you see that if you score high on authority, loyalty and sanctity, if or.
just let's do a loyalty and authority. You're going to say, hey, when federal officers are approaching your vehicle and tell you to stop or to get out, and you don't, you should expect to die. Like that's just, I think a lot of the people that I know would look at that and be like, yeah, that's how that works. If you don't do what, cause cause you're scoring high on, on authority, right? And loyalty to the country and the laws and order. And so you're going to be like, yeah, that's a slam dunk. It gets tricky there for the Christian who would be conservative when you add sanctity into it.
Cameron (14:22)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Nathan (14:31)
because if you're adding sanctity of life in the middle there on what's considered to be a more conservative moral value, then that dynamic changes. so anyway, that's a long way of saying that when I look at the responses to this, it does very neatly follow along that moral matrix of where our preconceived ⁓ ruts, morally speaking, and I'm not saying that that's bad. You should have a moral foundation, but
Cameron (14:53)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (14:58)
Very few people, think, are going to look at this and be let's parse through all the details here and see if we can come to a conclusion. I think most people, by and large, immediately said right or wrong. And we're off to the races. So it's not really a conversation. It's just a, how do we judge each other based off of whether or not people came to the same conclusion instantaneously? That's why, that's why I kind of like am heavy-hearted about the conversation because I don't actually feel like I have to perform for you.
Cameron (15:05)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
But hearing...
Nathan (15:27)
for you to categorize me as somebody who can immediately see what's right and wrong. And I would go so far to say is that if in a situation like this, you can't see it a little bit from both sides, that you've ossified your compassion and your moral and even authoritarian reasoning in a way that isn't really healthy. And I know that's a bold statement, but I understand that and I'm still making it.
Cameron (15:53)
No, but it's right because part of why Jonathan Haidt wrote that book in the first place was to help people see from, see the other perspective and to provide some insight into why people fall along the lines they do and make the choices they do. It would be, and if we just pause for a second and step back, we can see that people don't adopt positions simply because they're trying to be as malicious or wicked or
cruel as possible. often the public discourse. Right, so the public discourse.
Nathan (16:24)
Well, that's the subtitle, why good people are divided. Because everybody's looking at this thinking that they are very
moral. They're not trying to be a jerk towards somebody who disagrees with them. They're saying, based on the way that I see the world, this is clearly right or wrong.
Cameron (16:34)
All right.
But a lot of the tenor of the moral discourse will lead you to believe that, no, certain people are just really inherently selfish and wicked, and others are just compassionate and loving. Now, if you say it in such bald terms, you can see how ludicrous that actually is. People do what they're doing and think along the lines that they do because they're trying to pursue what they believe to be the right thing. So it's helpful to bear that in mind. And by the way,
You don't need Jonathan Haidt to see that as well. There was a church father who made this point quite powerfully, and that was Augustine of Hippo. But he pointed out, I mean, people are pursuing what they believe to be the good. Now, can we be mistaken? Of course we can. But if we encounter somebody who is mistaken, what we ideally speaking, what we want to do, especially in America, where we talk these things through, ideally speaking, is we want to persuade them.
But unfortunately, if you're painted into a certain kind of mode of response, as we often are, especially in increasingly hysterical social media set spaces, then there isn't going to be the room, you're not going to allow people the room to reach their own decisions or make their own conclusions. You're going to be pushed more and more to just give a strong knee-jerk response and to speak in very simple terms. This person's bad, we're on the good side.
Nathan (17:55)
Okay.
Cameron (18:00)
They're on the bad side. And then you start getting into all of this language that doesn't help anybody.
Nathan (18:07)
So there's that, but let me make it worse. And this is thinking out loud, so I'm just pitching this to you. We'll work this out. There's also a huge part of people watching something like this, and they watch it as a validation of what they want to see and have happen. And so you said we'll talk about the symbolic part of this in a second, but there is a way in which a certain group of people will look at this and say, see, I told you so.
It's a racist, fascist regime that's resulting in bloodshed on the street. And then another group of people is going to look at this and say, look, it's a bunch of liberal, leftist, Antifa, pro-immigrant, pro-anti-law nut cases running around driving their car sideways on one way streets and fearing with the federal, you know, ⁓ legally mandated laws. so, so there's...
Cameron (18:59)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (19:01)
There's a way in which we look at the death of somebody and then it just enables us to put a check mark, a tally mark in our box of like, told you so, see we're right. it serves as a form of moral validation for us to be able to do that.
Cameron (19:18)
It's going to take a lot of discipline for some of us and be wary of this because it's quite insidious, but for some of us not to have these people converted into some sort of a symbol. It's one of the most basic ways in which we can dehumanize a person. We look at them in symbolic terms rather than as people. You've spelled out the terms of the different sides really well, Nathan, very helpfully. ⁓
very firm side, the ICE agent will function as a scapegoat for all that is unjust in our society right now. And it'll be easy to lose sight of the fact that no, this is a person. This is a man, this is a husband, this guy has friends, he's a family, he has a favorite meal. Bringing in all these mundane facts, has a favorite color, favorite band, this is a person, it's a human being. On the other side,
Renée Good will serve in a similar fashion. She will become a symbol of all that is unjust, corrupt, decadent about the nation when she in fact also, she's a human being in this case. If you want to think her by the way, who basically spells this out very well and very eloquently, would be Renée Girard. In all of his books, particularly in this case, particularly his book, The Scapegoat.
We want to be wary of that tendency. It's very human. As Nathan always says, we're meaning-seeking creatures. This is what we do.
Nathan (20:48)
But how?
So how do we
how do we not though because I I mean I is almost immediately after I mean, they're still Excuse me. There's still blood in the snow and There's a stack of flowers and a pride flag and a Palestinian flag And you're like what and then and then you know, you have the federal level administration immediately coming out and saying this is an act of domestic terrorism so it
Cameron (21:10)
Yeah. Yep.
Nathan (21:18)
It just went from like blood still in the snow to national symbols. Like that is the world we live in.
Cameron (21:25)
And
we don't have a painting of We don't have a painting of Renee Goode yet. I don't think so, but I bet we will at some point here soon. Maybe where she'll literally become some kind of an icon. That did happen. That's happened with a lot of people. Right, there's the George Floyd painting. You've seen that before as well. Yeah, murals, all of that. And so we're just describing, yeah, so Nathan's question is really, so how do we...
Nathan (21:38)
A secular saint.
murals and yeah.
Cameron (21:52)
How do we not do that? How do we not fall prey to, and I hope it's clear that in a certain sense, there's a kind of inevitability to some of that, I imagine, but we don't ultimately want to convert somebody into a symbol completely because then we're doing so at the cost of their humanity. So how do we not do that? I think, yeah.
Nathan (22:17)
Well, but it does get tricky though when people
are acting in a way that they want to be a symbol. And so there are careers and there are forms of activism where you are going out to symbolically represent something bigger than yourself. So it's a game that everybody involved here was playing.
Cameron (22:25)
Sure.
It is.
It's not only is it a game, it's just a human habit of mind. mean, how many of us, for instance, see politicians? How many of us see the president of the United States as a human being? Whether we're for or against the current administration, most people were conditioned to see politicians as they're in a different category. They're not people anymore.
Nathan (22:59)
Pick Mark Zuckerberg. Everybody thinks he's a lizard or an alien. You know, I mean...
Cameron (23:04)
Correct. Yeah. mean, same thing with movie stars. I mean, we have a tendency to do this. it's, so some of the ways in which we can push back, Nathan, I'd love to hear you on this as well, but just in our own personal lives, how can we work to avoid this? Prayer is one way that is, prayer can be a very humanizing thing, specifically when we are praying for someone. all, most churches have traditions where
you will pray for, regardless of your political affiliation, you will pray for the leaders of your land. That certainly, mean, many churches will do this where you, so whether that, you'll pray for, it's a biblical command. So, well, praying for people is an inherently humanizing activity because it recognizes that you are all creatures under the rulership of God and that you, and not only that, you are dependent creatures. And even if you are a person of
Nathan (23:42)
I mean, it's a biblical command, so probably you should do it.
You
Cameron (24:03)
considerable power, wealth or fame or fortune, whatever it is, you are only where you are because of God. In other words, your authority is conditional upon the ultimate authority of God. It's not your own. So when we're praying for people who start to function as national symbols,
This is a way of reclaiming them in our own minds and hearts, just for our own perspective. mean, they remain persons, regardless of how we see them, but it's a way of reclaiming them as a person and bringing ourselves back in touch with the reality that, no, René Goode was a person, this ICE officer, whose name has escaped me right now, Nathan, is a human being. And if this is something we're deeply invested in,
Nathan (24:36)
You know there was a f-
Cameron (24:55)
This is something we really care about. This is something we're up in arms about. Then we want to pray for all involved. Everybody involved, their lives are forever changed now. They're forever altered. The children of ⁓ Renee Good. mean, these are ways to bring us back to the fact that no, we're talking about persons here, not symbols. Politics are important. We're not saying that, but politics ought not to dictate how we see reality.
Nathan (25:21)
Yeah, and in the void the extremism of I think it's interesting like okay, let's say that it comes out and this is a big if but with the that the the ⁓ The conclusion of all of this is that the officer acted immorally and illegally and is sentenced The opposite of that is not to abolish ice
So you can call for the reform of something, but that's not what the protest signs say. It's get ICE out. That's what the governor is saying. Get him out. ⁓ is, so it goes so radically to the extreme in the other direction of like, well, this individual within this organization, one out of 2000 people did this. Clearly the whole system is melted down. That's one form of extremism that we can snicker at. On the other hand, you can look at Renee's life. And there was a whole lot there that I'm sure that we disagreed with on profoundly.
and at the same time say she was made in the image of God. And so the Christian response, even to the person that you disagree with morally, not, you want to see them shot in the head, ⁓ that's not the solution here. And so it's getting harder, I think, Cameron, to feel like you're not, there's a middle ground here that feels ever smaller to me of saying, I'm not being morally wishy washy, I'm not being biblically inconsistent.
I'm not being not compassionate. I'm not shirking authority and responsibility, but all of these things converge in these situations in such a way that I have to really frame this from a biblical perspective. think somebody famously once say, you know, pray for those who persecute you. ⁓ but I, know, we learned, I learned from my really healthy habit. If you want to just try something, ⁓ our friend Jonathan was telling me about this once of, and I've done this multiple times for whatever reason.
You know, particularly in situations where you're frustrated. So maybe you're sitting on the airplane that's taking too long to take off or something. you start watching or some public place, sit there and as people walk by, look at them and in your mind, just say, made in the image of God, made in the image of God, made in the image of God. God has a sense of humor on that one, but made in the image of God, you know, you can add some commentary on there, but it's a, it's a, it's a way in which you're, you're conditioning yourself to say, I want to see other people.
primarily theologically and have an anthropology rooted in theology not in cultural posturing or ⁓ Screen time hysteria But if you aren't actively trying to grow in that direction, it's not going to come naturally
Cameron (27:58)
There's a really telling aside that Michael Polanyi has in his book, Personal Knowledge. I don't really understand why it's in there. It's really interesting because it's an amazing piece of wisdom, but it doesn't really pertain to most of what's in the rest of the book. Basically, where he's talking about reform. Polanyi was a Hungarian chemist, lived through the Second World War, was in a position to appreciate this. Basically, he says, look,
When it comes to light that there's deep-seated change that is needed in an institution, there is corruption. The temptation in certain times is to call for revolution, to tear everything down. This is always a mistake and it always ends in the worst possible way if it's actually carried through. What is actually needed is the slow, careful, painstaking work of reform.
And I just, I've thought a lot about that. should actually, I should hunt down that full quote and just read it because it's so, so good. And I didn't do full justice to it here, but I was thinking Nathan, as, as you were talking about how Michael Polanyi is incredibly subtle and careful point plays, you know, how it sounds to people and then how it sounds when a politician named Jacob Frey says to ICE, get the F out.
What sounds more powerful? What's going to go viral instantly? What's going to get all of the media attention? mean, you want, you want this and here's where I'm going to sound real cynical for a second. So I look at, look at Jacob Frey, this really good looking, very well-spoken, charismatic guy. He's, he knows how to be a superstar. And ⁓ do I think that he sees the opportunity a little bit? Yes, I do. And I think it worked, but I think
what he's doing is precisely what we don't need. It's more, and I'm not talking about in terms of, well, if we could just be a little bit more civil. I'm talking about adding, when you have public leaders like that, adding more inflamed rhetoric already. Everything in America is so volatile. It's ready to go up in flames so quickly right now. mean, literal flames, we're seeing them everywhere. And then you have the leaders of the land.
using the same kind of language, it doesn't help anybody. We need people who will be mature grownups and do the careful work of, but again, reform doesn't sound sexy. It doesn't sell. Get the F out of Minnesota does. It plays really well with public rhetoric right now.
Nathan (30:21)
Do you think we're just getting?
yeah but it-
There's another part on this that yeah, so it plays well and it's cool to look at a Lamborghini, but a Peterbilt probably delivers your groceries. You know what Like most of the freight in the country of the things that are actually necessary for you to live are hauled on, you know, hauled on vehicles that aren't snazzy. And so I think there's just, that's the work of the church, I think, is to like haul the freight, carry the groceries.
Cameron (30:47)
Yeah.
Nathan (31:04)
supply the basic material and be that kind of moral like we're so yes, it's not flashy. It's not going to get the most clicks. It's not ⁓ but it just serves the good. ⁓ You know, it goes all the way back to so it's not just Polanyi, but I mean a big part of Plato's argument in the Republic is that the nature of the state is based on the character of the nature of the citizens of the state. And so we can.
look at something like this and be like, I don't think any of these people should have been where they were, but they were. that's an indication of a bigger, more systemic thing that we are all part of ⁓ in our world. so, there's a way in which we can quickly absolve ourselves of feeling culpable for living in a broken culture by just like, somebody else's fault, rather than say, hey, wait a second, this ought not be and
Cameron (31:39)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (31:59)
I have, I have no, I can't go to enough protests. can't make enough podcasts. can't like there's, there's no way Cameron, you and I are going to change the situation. What happened there. And it's in the past too, but we can think about what is the attitude that we want to have toward other humans, toward law, toward order, toward the way in which we want to make our moral, ⁓ judgments, the way we want to teach our children and interact with our neighbors. And so the healthy way forward is, is to learn from what these things say about where we're at and go from there.
not crawl back down into the predefined ruts of screaming.
Cameron (32:38)
Alright Nathan, I think we've said about as much as we can helpfully say right now.
Nathan (32:43)
Well, let me, nope,
can add one more thing. I'll tell one more story and then we'll get you to wrap this up. So here's another thought is that years ago I was talking to a lady, this was in Massachusetts and her son had just, who was a state police trooper was just involved in a violent altercation and pulled a guy over who was quite a bit bigger than him and ⁓ very hopped up on drugs.
Cameron (32:48)
Alright.
Nathan (33:11)
And turned into this huge fight. The guy gets out of the car and they fight kind of all down the berm. Both get busted up. It's a horrible situation. Finally gets the guy cuffed. ⁓ And as, and there was a good bit of security footage of this that came out also. And all throughout it, everybody was saying, why didn't you just shoot the guy? Like here and here and here and here. You would have been justified in using lethal force as an officer over the wall.
And it seemed like a slam dunk case. so she was just processing that as a Christian and as her son is a police officer, being a Christian of saying he had the right to do this thing, but he did it. And, I think that's one of the places where you want to start thinking where I want to start thinking where all of us should be continually thinking of just because I have the right to do this. Does it mean that it's the right thing to do in this situation? Is there an alternative and is there another option here? And so that just.
I was always impressed by that story of somebody who had the right to do something and chose not to take a life and suffered physically in his body for that, by the way, but the outcome was different. And you never heard about this story on the news because of that. And I bet there are 150 incidents like that happening today across the country between law enforcement and other people that you'll never hear about because somebody was choosing not to exercise authority in the power that they actually had in the taking of a life. So
Cameron (34:18)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (34:38)
We ⁓ come back to where we started on recognizing, as a Christian, that there are times in which your legal rights and your moral obligations don't perfectly harmonize, and that requires a lot of thoughtfulness and wisdom.
Cameron (34:57)
That's a powerful story and it's a real challenging story. We hope we've given you some tools for this particular event. we think more about it, no doubt more facts will come to light and this will continue to be in the headlines for a while. Thank you for sticking with us throughout this conversation. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, a podcast where we think out loud about current events and Christian hope.