Regardless of what black Americans think, the police departments that protect and serve their communities should be defunded immediately. At least that is the latest propaganda being peddled in a bizarre new campaign by the far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a radical organization literally founded by members of the Communist Party USA.

According to the ACLU’s new campaign, American police are and always have been racist yahoos brutally oppressing minority communities. Reforms, investigations, firings, and other policy changes will not suffice. Instead, America’s thousands of local police departments must be defunded as soon as possible, with the “savings” being “invested” into priorities established by the ACLU.

In a series of videos purporting to document the last “100 years of history” surrounding policing in America, the far-left group argues that “policing still acts as an occupying force in communities of color.” And so, instead of public funding for police to investigate, punish, and prevent crime, that money should go to “black and brown communities,” the organization said.

A petition that goes with the campaign, which has been signed by almost 150,000 people as of this writing, displays hatred and dishonesty toward America’s police officers — many of whom put their lives on the line to protect their communities. And yet, from the ACLU’s rhetoric, American cops might as well be a pack of wild invaders led by Genghis Khan.

“The policing institutions in our country are deeply entrenched in racism and brutality, and we cannot allow it to continue,” the petition reads. “These inherently systemic issues require immediate and permanent solutions. That requires a bold reimagining of the role police play in our society: It is time to divest from law enforcement and reinvest in the Black and Brown communities [sic] they unjustly target.”

As usual, “defunding police” hysteria by guilt-ridden white liberals and agenda-driven hate-mongers such as those running the ACLU is portrayed as merely a benevolent effort to “help” black people who supposedly cannot help themselves. The narrative is very much akin to liberal campaigns to “save the whales” or “save the baby seals.”

Ironically, though, polling data show that black Americans are overwhelming against defunding the police departments that protect their communities from violent criminals. In fact, according to a Gallup survey released in August 2020 — right at the height of the media and “Black Lives Matter” demonization campaign against supposedly “racist” police — more than eight in ten black Americans wanted the same or a greater police presence.

In short, despite its supposed devotion to “democracy,” the ACLU’s radical agenda to defund police would require ignoring the wishes of the very black Americans it pretends to be concerned about. In fact, the scheme would require that a tiny, fringe minority of radicals be allowed to impose unpopular policy on the rest of the community using undemocratic means.

The ACLU’s “sweeping three-part formula” includes, among other elements, handcuffing the police, “prohibiting” them from enforcing laws against crimes that the ACLU determines are “non-dangerous” using fines or arrest. The money saved by eviscerating police will be “reinvested” into unspecified “alternatives to policing” that will supposedly help communities “thrive.”

Finally, for those “rare instances in which police officers do interact with community members” under the new policing regime, the ACLU proposes to implement “common-sense, iron-clad legal constraints” against police and “protections” for those law-enforcement interacts with. Of course, the U.S. Constitution and all 50 state constitutions already contain such protections.

To advance its dangerous anti-police narrative, the ACLU uses deception, lies, and half-truths. The very first video is based on a fraudulent narrative, painting Rodney King — a wife beater who pleaded guilty to armed robbery — as an innocent victim of racist cops. The fact that he charged at police while intoxicated after a dangerous high-speed chase reaching almost 120 mph is never mentioned.

Even the quote from the official LA commission report about the incident is used in a deceptive manner. When the narrator cited the commission’s mention of “racism and bias within the Los Angeles Police Department,” he failed mention that it was based on a survey that found just one fourth of officers in the department thought racism or bias existed at all in the department. In other words, more than 75 percent of officers did not believe racism existed.

But this was never about racism. The communist movement in the United States — backed for generations by the mass-murdering regime enslaving the Soviet Union — has been waging war on American police for almost a century now. In fact, in an official 1961 report headlined “Communist Plot Against the Free World Police,” the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate outlined the nature of the threat.

Among other concerns, it was revealed that communist agents across the West were working to undermine local police so that law-enforcement could be nationalized and federalized. Communists directed by Soviet intelligence had a special focus on the United States. The Judiciary Committee also detailed some of the methods, including formation of mobs to attack police and then demonizing the officers.

Considering the history of the ACLU, its latest salvo in its war on America’s police should come as no surprise. Among the charter members of the ACLU at its founding were numerous senior Communist Party officials including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Louis Budenz, and even eventual Communist Party USA General-Secretary William Z. Foster.

ACLU Executive Director Roger Baldwin, who led the group from 1920 to 1950 and visited the USSR twice, was proud of his communist leanings. “I am for socialism,” he famously wrote. “I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal…. I don’t regret being part of the communist tactic. I knew what I was doing. I was not an innocent liberal.”

American officials have known this for decades. In 1948, the California Senate Fact Finding Committee on Un-American Activities released a report on it. “The ACLU may be definitely classified as a Communist front or transmission belt organization,” the committee said on page 107 of its 1948 report. “At least 90 percent of its efforts are on behalf of Communists who come in conflict with the law.”

Stripping American communities of their police forces would be a recipe for chaos, especially in minority communities. But the American people, including black Americans, have made it abundantly clear that they are vehemently opposed to such an idiotic plan.

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WHO:

• John Cabello – State Representative (68th Dist.) and Detective, who is a tireless defender of conservatism in Springfield

• Jim Sacia – served 30 years in law enforcement, 28 of those being a FBI special agent in Rockford, and then 11 years as an Illinois State Representative (89th Dist.)

WHAT:

• Illinois Back the Blue Rally – organized by Concerned Citizens for America of Northern Illinois and Illinois Family Institute

WHY:

• To support all men and women in law enforcement and the amazing, vital, and dangerous work they do to protect our communities and country from lawlessness and evil.

• “We support all the men and women who serve in law enforcement and the amazing, vital, and dangerous work they do to protect our communities from lawlessness and evil.

• Now is the time to raise our voices and been seen standing not only in support of law enforcement, but opposed to forces at work who demonize all who serve to protect us, our county, and its Constitution.

• These forces include the complicit media, who have crafted a faux narrative of systemic racism to provide cover for their violent pawns uses to incite terror in their attempt to fundamentally change this nation from a God-fearing nation that protects our natural rights and focuses on individual responsibility, into an Orwellian society, shaped into their socialist and communist ideals where there is no liberty and Government is god,” said Concerned Citizens for America of Northern Illinois.

The ideology of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and other “social justice” organizations teaches that all whites are racist oppressors, thereby justifying verbal attacks on people who are deemed inveterate racists and justifying riots to destroy everything that has emerged from an allegedly irremediable racist system. In promoting an explicitly racist ideology, BLM and other “social justice” organizations institutionalize racism, and we are suffering the fruits of that poisonous ideology.

In the hell-bent quest by America-hating revolutionaries to destroy America by destroying its institutions and history, 60 monuments have been removed, ordered removed, defaced, or torn down. In addition, according to Reinsurance News,

While no estimates of the costs of the damage is available yet, a look back at the costliest U.S. civil disorders shows that there’s potential for claims from the current riots, which are in multiple cities, to have easily run into the billions of dollars already.

Worse still, this BLM-led revolution has resulted in 25 deaths, hundreds of injuries—including injuries to 700 law enforcement officers—and the establishment of a rogue nation in the midst of downtown Seattle with the blessing of the incompetent mayor who called the squalid, uninhabitable, and dangerous encampment a free-love street festival.

The culture-destroyers are not done yet. Well-known racist activist Shaun King, whose purported racial identity and numerous fundraising projects are questioned by even leftists, recently tweeted,

Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been.

and

All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.

BLM, with whom King was previously associated, is a destructive revolutionary group leading a Maoist-like cultural revolution, and many conservatives don’t seem to understand that. Those who support BLM and its skin-pigment-obsessed divisive, separatist, elitist ideology are de facto racists, no matter their skin color.

In National Review, Kyle Smith describes the white liberal BLM disciples as “the White-Guilt Cult”:

Amidst nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, a black man and woman are seated on a park bench while a white woman … takes to her megaphone. “We repent on behalf of, uh, Caucasian people,” she says. A small crowd of white people comes to kneel before the two seated black folks, who are co-pastors of a local church. Some of the kneelers wash the feet of the black people. … Several people start audibly weeping, or keening, as the speaker continues. Roughly a dozen people join in the gesture and kneel before the black couple. “We have put our necks, put our hands, our knees, upon the necks of our African-American brothers and sisters, people of color, indigenous people.” …

The original sin in the White Guilt Cult, the New Church of Anti-Racism, is to be, “uh, Caucasian people.” … If anything, the Great Awokening’s response to the George Floyd killing seems to be bolstering racial barriers rather than eradicating them. By making a religion of anti-racism, white people carry on with the longstanding project of “othering” black folks. … Take the principles of Woke in vain and you invite instantaneous ritual chastisement—the most thrilling, ecstatic element of the woke religion. The techno-narcissistic innovation of the Wokesters is that they have made themselves, as a collective, their own godhead, equipped with the authority to wield and unleash the thunderbolt of righteousness on blasphemers here and now, on their own authority. …

“White silence equals violence” is one new precept gaining currency. …  How exciting it must be to upend the meanings of words in service of the greater cause of smiting one’s perceived enemies, or even whatever suspected counterrevolutionaries there may be among one’s sworn allies. No one dared to be the first to stop applauding a Stalin speech. 

Even Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy has joined the anti-biblical white-guilt Cult, last week calling for white people to pay penance for sinful acts of racism that they never committed by shining the shoes of black people.

The ideology of BLM grows out of Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is essentially repackaged socialism with its focus on economic redistribution. CRT like that espoused by BLM and scores of other organizations and ideologues emphasizes redistribution of wealth and values uniformity of economic and social position over liberty. Those whose worldview has been shaped by CRT–also known deceptively as “social justice warriors,” seek to use the force of government to establish economic uniformity.

CRT focuses on race, sex, class, “sexual orientation,” and “gender identity.” It encourages people to view the world through the divisive lens of identity politics, dividing groups into “oppressors” and “oppressed.” Those who are identified as “oppressors” need not have committed any acts of actual persecution or oppression, nor feel any sense of superiority toward or dislike of the supposed “oppressed” class. CRT promotes the idea that “institutional racism,” as opposed to actual acts of mistreatment of individuals by other individuals, is the cause of differing lots in life.

“Social justice” activists cultivate the racist, sexist, heterophobic belief that whites (especially males and heterosexuals) are oppressors—a belief that robs minorities of a sense of agency in and responsibility for their own lives, telling them that their lots in life cannot improve through their own efforts but only through endless confessions of guilt on the parts of the purported oppressors. CRT cultivates a sense of perpetual victimization and powerlessness on the parts of minorities and an irrational and illegitimate sense of guilt on the parts of whites (or men or heterosexuals).

Finally, social justice theory is distinctly anti-American and hyper-focuses on America’s mistakes and failings. CRT diminishes or ignores the remarkable success America has achieved in integrating virtually every ethnic and racial group in the world and in enabling people to improve their lots in life through economic opportunity and American principles of liberty and equality.

Racism peddlers—including colorless racism-peddlers and profiteers like Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility—disseminate their cancerous ideology everywhere. Many Americans view our colleges and universities as the primary indoctrination centers, but they should look at government middle and high schools, because indoctrinating the next generation begins long before college.

Through “professional development”—which are the teacher training workshops, seminars, and conferences that take place during summer breaks, institute days, and late-arrival days—teachers are being coached and pressured by administrators and colleagues to adopt the beliefs of “anti-racism” and diversity trainers whose hefty fees are paid for by the public.

Teachers are forced to attend these indoctrination workshops, which never include resources or experts that challenge the assumptions of “anti-racism” trainers. Teachers are then expected to incorporate these revolutionary, leftist, and dubious beliefs into their classroom instruction. Our taxes are being used in government schools to teach children to hate America.

The predatory “anti-racism” scammers profit from peddling guilt to whites, shaming them into falsely believing—or pretending to believe—they are racists. The snake-oil salesmen and women do that in two ways. First, they redefine racism. Racism no longer refers to the belief that people with brown or black skin are by nature inferior. Nor does it refer to individual acts of incivility, unkindness, oppression, or violence. It refers to being white in a culture whose power structures used to be controlled by whites. Whites are guilty of racism and oppression based on nothing more than the color of their skin. This repugnant redefinition is the antithesis of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream for America. It is also unbiblical.

The second way snake-oil salespersons peddle their ugly wares is equally sneaky. They recast all criticism of or opposition to their ideology as something negative, thereby making those who disagree reluctant to express their opposition. Robin DiAngelo insultingly describes the denials of white-skinned people that they are racists as “white fragility.” Those whites who  aren’t racists don’t want to deny being racists because if they do, they’ll then be charged with non-existent white fragility on top of their non-existent racism.

When I worked at Deerfield High School, the district hired expensive racism huckster from California, Glenn Singleton, to teach District 113 employees about their racism. At his first lecture to the entire district, Singleton pre-classified his audience as falling into three categories according to their potential responses to his theories: The first group were those who would agree with him immediately. The second group were those who would be on the fence and need to be convinced. And the third group were those “who are gifted at subverting reform.” Singleton cunningly attempted to prevent criticism by pre-labeling pejoratively those who disagreed with him. This dishonest labeling tactic works because conservatives let it.

Organizations, resources, and profiteers that provide “anti-racism” propaganda to government schools are numerous, but here are some that taxpayers should watch out for:

• The 1619 Project—a much criticized revision of American history by the New York Times and racism-peddler/activist Nikole Hannah-Jones

• Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center

• Deep Equity

• White Privilege Conference

• Pacific Education Group/Courageous Conversation About Race—founder Glenn Singleton

• National SEED Project (Seeking Education Equity and Diversity)

• “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”—essay written by Peggy McIntosh

• The People’s History of the United States, a revisionist history written by Howard Zinn

It is not racist to criticize the loathsome and radical BLM that is explicitly committed to “disrupting ” the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure led by a father and mother, and to normalizing homosexuality and “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices. Such justifiable criticism does not become racist just because leftists shriek over and over and over that it is. Their epithet-hurling is not a magical incantation that turns truth into ugliness. It is a means of intimidation that leftists use all the time because conservatives quake and crumble in its wake.

Snap out of it, conservatives or you feed and strengthen the belching behemoth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Fomenting-Racism-in-the-21st-Century_audio_01.mp3

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Black lives do matter, but not because they’re black—which, as “progressives” continually tell us—is just a social construct. Black lives matter not because of the color of their skin but because they are human lives created in the image and likeness of God and endowed by God with unalienable, intrinsic rights.

Since society is composed of fallen humans with desperately wicked hearts, many forces conspire against blacks, including some toxic systemic forces that demand solutions. Few if any of these solutions are proposed by Black Lives Matter (BLM), Antifa, or the Democratic Party. In fact, in the grimy, grasping quest for power of BLM, Antifa, and “progressives,” they double-down on the policies and cancerous ideologies that undergird those policies, thereby increasing their own political power and the suffering of those whose votes they covet.

Because black lives matter, here are some ideas for uprooting or transforming malignant systemic dysfunction that harms black (and red, yellow, brown, and white) lives:

• Because black babies matter, we should end the barbaric practice of feticide that results in a disproportionate number of black babies being slaughtered every year.

• Because black women matter, we should create a public service campaign like no other—one that encourages men to marry women before having sex with them, or to marry women they impregnate.

• Because black children matter, this public service campaign should urge mothers and fathers to stay together. There is no greater protection against poverty and criminality than being raised by both a mother and father in an intact family. Fatherless homes reliably produce boys vulnerable to gangs who are tutored in the ways of criminality and then grow up to commit violent crimes against their own communities, thereby demonstrating that black lives don’t matter to them.

• Because black families matter, tax policy and public aid should incentivize marriage and employment.

• Because black families matter, they have a right to safe schools and to school choice. Black families living in deteriorating and dangerous urban communities (most of which have long been run by Democrats) should have choices regarding where their children are educated.

• Because black children matter, teachers’ unions must be eradicated. Teachers’ unions protect the jobs of terrible teachers, and through excessive pensions are impoverishing already cash-strapped states which then pass these costs on to taxpayers.

• Because black children matter, government schools should not propagate as truth ideologically biased ideas like those found in The 1619 Project or Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. Teaching erroneous history and/or teaching that America is a country of unparalleled oppression and racial bigotry in which blacks cannot positively affect their own futures does a grave disservice to blacks and truth. Such inaccurate resources foster divisiveness rather than unity or love of the principles on which this country was founded. Untruthful depictions of America’s history in either direction—intensification or minimization of failures— are wrong. It is leftist ideas embedded in “teaching for social justice” that foster hatred of America and racial division. These ideas cultivate feelings of bitterness, resentment, and envy on the parts of “people of color” toward colorless people who have never harmed them. And these ideas cultivate the false belief in communities of color that improving their lots in life is impossible unless colorless people who have committed no sin of racial oppression take the knee.

• Because black lives matter, police unions that protect brutal police officers must be reformed. In a recent National Review article titled “It’s Past Time to Examine How Police Unions Protect Bad Cops,”  John Fund draws attention to an article in the Stanford Law Review in which Katherine Bies writes,

[D]uring the rise of police unions to political power in the 1970s, police unions lobbied for legislation that shrouded personnel files in secrecy and blocked public access to employee records of excessive force or other officer misconduct. Today, these officer misconduct confidentiality statutes continue to prohibit public disclosure of disciplinary records related to police shootings and other instances of excessive force. … [P]olice unions often strategically frame any opposition to their agenda of secrecy as endangering public safety and harming the public interest. However, police unions often conflate “the public interest” with the private interests of police officers. … Additionally, police unions have established highly developed political machinery that exerts significant political and financial pressure on all three branches of government.  

• Because black women, men, and children matter, we should address the existence and easy accessibility of pornography that is destroying families.

• Because black families matter, we should rethink legalized gambling and recreational marijuana that are hurting families economically and spiritually.

• Because black lives matter, celebrities should throw their hefty influence behind all these life-affirming proposals through their music, films, streaming programs, and tweets.

Because black lives matter, theologically orthodox Christians must better employ their creativity and tenacity in figuring out how to “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” Because black lives matter, they—like people of all colors and no color—must hear the good news that in Christ “there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.”

Pastor Doug Wilson exposes the worldly “rival reconciliation project” that exacerbates  division and arouses hatred:

[B]ecause secular man has rejected the one in whom we all live and move and have our being, all his attempts are of necessity a downward integration into the void. Their proud project of universal toleration consistently spirals downward into the acids of hatred and violence.

In America, because of our Christian heritage, this project is an attempt to reconcile the trappings of traditional Christianity with the central dogmas of cultural Marxism, and it represents the high water mark of duncical folly. It is an attempt to reconcile squares and circles, good and evil, light and darkness, folly and wisdom, God and the devil. The cosmic reconciliation purchased by Christ has nothing whatever to do with this sort of monstrosity. …

The reason the streets of Minneapolis are on fire is because secular man in his pretended wisdom has been trying to reconcile two completely different methods of reconciliation — the way of atonement through the blood of Christ together with his way of accusation, recrimination, reparations, and retribution. …

But there can be no peace between the God of forgiveness and the god of recrimination, the God of no condemnation and the god of all condemnation.

Should we reconcile blacks and whites who were caught up in bitter enmity with each other? Of course. That is what the gospel does. Should we try to reconcile the world’s way of reconciling with God’s way of reconciling? Of course not. The world’s way only foments more and more bitterness, while God’s way breaks down the middle wall of partition. The world’s way is impotent, and God’s way saves to the uttermost.

There are many Christians who do not see what is happening, and who do not understand a blessed thing about it, but who are trying to help out with this monstrosity by decking out the secularist approach to reconciliation in the language of Christian reconciliation. They point out that ethnic reconciliation is a good thing in Scripture, which is true enough, but then they want to drape the Christian language of reconciliation over the secular way of doing it, which contains no authority, no sap, no salt, and no blood.

The short form of this atrocious compromise is this: Because the blood of Christ puts all ethnic enmities to death, we think we can just go straight to the group hug, declare all ethnic enmities a form of bigotry and a violation of America’s core values, and dispense with the blood of Christ. And then we wonder where all this hatred is coming from.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Because-Black-Lives-Matter_audio.mp3

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Written by J. Warner Wallace

When we heard about the shootings last week, my wife and I were heartsick. Seven people died in what feels like an escalating national crisis. Two people died at the hands of police officers, while five officers died at the hands of a single suspect. The tension and distrust between African Americans and police officers is at the highest level in my lifetime. As my son Jimmy (a third-generation police officer himself) flew as a member of the Honor Guard to represent our agency at five officer funerals in Dallas this week, I began to gather my thoughts about how we, as Christians, might respond to the growing dilemma. I’ve tried to accurately communicate the nature of police work, but for every person who asks for my police perspective, there’s another who wants my advice as a pastor and Christian Case Maker. In this article, I’d like to outline six things each of us, as citizens and Christians, can do to respond to the growing dilemma:

1. Educate with a purpose.

I’m often surprised to witness the vitriol and intensity of those who are ready to debate the issues before they’ve taken the time to examine the facts closely. It’s easy to find yourself in an argument without truly understanding the perspective of those involved. A balanced education requires us to view the issues from both sides of the coin. All of us should take the time to do the research and be informed. As Christians, however, our desire to be educated must involve more than merely the consumption of information. Our education must have a goal: empathy and compassion. When Jesus saw the crowds of people in the region near Capernaum, He “had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). These people weren’t yet disciples of Jesus, and they likely didn’t yet agree with what Jesus’ had to say. But Jesus understood their situation, and this knowledge informed His response. The information resulted in compassion and empathy, in spite of the fact the crowds may not have been in agreement with Jesus or his disciples.

If you’re on one side of this debate or another, you may be having difficulty feeling empathy for those with whom you disagree. Take some time to educate yourself. There’s enough human struggle on both sides to warrant your understanding and compassion. Let me give you two examples of how a brief education can help you rethink your vitriol. A law enforcement agency recently reached out to an African American civil rights leader and invited him to participate in a day of “Shoot or Don’t Shoot” training. This realistic exercise placed the civil rights leader in several law enforcement scenarios that required him to make a quick decision about the use of force. In one scenario he acted too slowly and was “killed” by the role-playing “suspect”. In a second scenario he “shot” an unarmed “suspect” role-player. By the end of the day, this educational experience helped the leader to empathize with the burden of the officers. In a similar way, a recent experiment was conducted to see if people treated a little girl differently if they thought she was underprivileged or homeless.  The same girl was dressed as a lost, upper class child and as a lost, under-privileged, homeless girl. She was treated in two remarkably different ways. People asked the better-dressed girl if they could help her find her parents, but walked by the homeless girl as though she didn’t exist. After watching this video, I began to understand the inherent bias we express toward certain people groups. As a result, it’s now easier for me to empathize with those I used to shun, ignore or vilify. Educate yourself about the plight of those with whom you disagree. You just might feel your heart grow.

2. Love the other side because there is no “other side.”

At the police memorial in Dallas last Tuesday, President Obama said, “Faced with this violence we wonder if the divides of race in America can ever be bridged. We wonder if an African-American community that feels unfairly targeted by police and police departments that feel unfairly maligned for doing their jobs can ever understand each other’s experience.” One way to bridge the divide is to remember that what we have in common far exceeds what separates us. As Christians, we should know this better than anyone. Each of us, regardless of race, has at least three important things in common. First, we are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Second, we are deeply rebellious and lost in our sin nature (Romans 3:23, 1 John 1:8). Finally, every one of us is desperately in need of a Savior (Ephesians 2:1-7). Regardless of any other differences we may have, these three foundational truths are common to all of us. I bet you’re a lot different than many members of your own family, but somehow you manage to come together on holidays and get along. Why? Because you have something important in common. Guess what? All of us may be different racially, economically or culturally, but we also have something important in common: we are members of the human family. There is no “other side” when it comes to family. All of us have something for which we can be praised, and something we can do better.

Take an honest look at your own shortcomings before you point a finger at others, then adopt Jesus’ view toward those you’ve thought of in an adversarial way. Jesus was, after all, the master of “counter-intuitive compassion.” He famously taught, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven’” (Matthew 5:43-45). As Christians, we’re called to love those we previously described as our enemies. Let’s talk the talk and walk the walk. Love the people on all sides of this issue and look for what we have in common rather than what might divide us.

3. Be a patient leader.

Most of us understand the value of patience, as long as it’s required ofsomeone else. In the instantaneous Information Age in which we live, the virtue of “measured response” has become a lost art. But Scripture is clear about the value of being “quick to hear, slow to speak,” and “slow to anger” (James 1:19). This is an important quality for good leaders. In my career, I worked for three different police chiefs. Each of them understood the value of patient, appropriate, disciplined response. If a questionable incident or shooting occurred, they would address the press within 24 hours and tell reporters that the officers involved had been removed from the field pending investigation, and that the full resources of our agency (and the DA’s office, if necessary) would be mobilized to determine the facts of the case. If asked to comment specifically on the “rightness” or “wrongness” of the incident, these leaders refrained from taking a positon or making any kind of statement in one direction or the other. They remained neutral and told reporters there would be nothing further to report until the investigation was conducted. While this measured response usually frustrated the press, it was a sign of true leadership.

If you’ve ever been involved in an investigation of this kind, you know one thing for sure: “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17). It’s a fool’s game to think you know the truth before you’ve taken the time to talk to everyone, examine every perspective, and collect all the facts. Good leaders don’t jump on social media and make a provocative, early statement. Leaders should be patient, measured and disciplined. It’s time for all of us, as Christians, to be leaders. Next time you see something in the press, even if it’s a short video clip that appears to be decisive, resist the temptation to draw an immediate conclusion. Let the process run its course, there will be plenty of time to respond later with more accuracy.

4. Rely on prayer and the power of God.

It might sound trite for a Christian to suggest prayer as the proper response to a crisis, but at the risk of saying something obvious, let me remind you of two important aspects of prayer. First, God alone is powerful enough to change the hearts of everyone involved in our present dilemma. Even though I know this is true, my actions are often contradictory; I know I can “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace” to “receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16), but I often fail to do so. Maybe you’re the same way. If, however, you’re frustrated that you don’t seem to be in a position to effect the kind of change you’d like, maybe it’s time to summon someone who is (and can).

There’s a second important truth related to prayer: communal prayer has the power to unify. There’s plenty of evidence to support this truth; we’ve seen many examples following the shooting in Dallas.Officers who pray together before watch are unified as a team, despite their diverse racial and cultural backgrounds. Communal prayer reminds us of our common dependence on God. In a similar way, we’ve seen a number of examples of prayer unifying those who might otherwise be dangerously opposed. When one Black Lives Matter group met a counter-protest group on the streets of Dallas, the potential for conflict was palpable. But when members of both groups came together to hug and pray for one another, they reclaimed their identity as brothers and sisters in Christ. Prayer does more than bend the ear of God; it bends our hearts toward one another. Take the time to pray for our situation, and whenever possible, seek opportunities to pray together.

5. Help agencies train and hire.

Most concerns related to law enforcement personnel revolve around two important questions: (1) Will our police officers act ethically, and (2) Will they use an appropriate level of force? As it turns out, police agencies can train their officers in both of these areas. As I mentioned in my last article, my Chief asked me to develop a six-session ethics program for our agency. Prior to this, we’d never engaged in a systematic, prolonged approach to ethics training. We were always in compliance with our state regulations related to ethics training, but we wanted to raise the bar and do even more, so we developed our own program. In a similar way, our agency also decided to exceed the state requirements for defensive tactics training by using several professional grapplers and force experts who happened to already work for our agency.

If you’re suspicious about police officers and their use of force, you might think it unwise to offer them additional training in this area. But, the more proficient an officer becomes in his or her use of force, the less likely they are to over-react when confronted physically. If you don’t feel confident grappling with a suspect, you’re all too likely to resort to a higher level of force in an effort to control the situation and defend yourself. Many shootings involving unarmed suspects are simply the result of an officer being afraid he or she was going to be fatally overpowered. The better we train police officers to handle themselves physically, the more likely they are to use an appropriately low level of force. But, in order to become proficient in this area, officers have to train regularly. That’s not an inexpensive proposal. If we want our police officers to be the most ethically and physically responsible officers they can be, we’ll need to support an increase in their training budget. As citizens, we need to make this clear to our local city governments.

We also need to address another increasingly difficult task facing local police agencies: hiring. When my son applied for his position five years ago, he was one of three-hundred candidates. Of these potential hires, only five passed the grueling testing and vetting process and made it to the Police Academy. Only three survived the Academy. Only two survived the training that followed. It tookthree-hundred applicants (and approximately one year) to produce two officers. That’s what it was like five years ago; it’s a lot more difficult today. Given the increasingly hostile climate and negative view of police officers, fewer good candidates are interested in law enforcement. We’re lucky to get eighty people to show up for the first battery of tests. As a result, agencies are shrinking. You and I can help, however. It starts with something simple: resist the temptation to vilify the entire law enforcement community when single officers make a mistake or do something unethical. This is still a noble profession. This is still the kind of calling you’d be proud to have your children answer. And people on both sides of “the divide” are invited to participate. Dallas Police Chief, David Brown (a devout African American Christian), reminded protestors following the Dallas murders that they could “become a part of the solution.” He told them to “serve your community, don’t be a part of the problem. We’re hiring… get off that protest line and put an application in, and we’ll put you in your neighborhood and we’ll help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about.”

6. Be courageous enough to seek (and address) the root causes.

When a paramedic responds to someone who’s having a heart attack, he or she responds to the attack, not the cause; the paramedic has no control over the bad eating habits or genetic history that preceded the attack. In a similar way, when a police officer responds to a violent assault, he or she confronts the attacker, not the underlying cause of the assault; the officer has no control over the social or environmental conditions that preceded the behavior. Police officers respond and react to crimes committed in their city, they don’t cause or create the conditions that resulted in the crime.

Politicians, sociologists and philosophers can debate the underlying causes for crime, and many have attributed some form of systemic racism as the chief culprit. Let me also offer an explanation that is grounded in my own anecdotal experience and in a number of important studies. When I served on my agency’s Gang Detail in the early 1990’s, I was in constant contact with a wide spectrum of gang members. We engaged white, Hispanic, Asian and African American gangsters from every economic background. I was interested in what caused these young men to become gangsters in the first place. It certainly didn’t seem to be something in their cultural, racial or economic lineage; they came from a very diverse set of circumstances. The more I got to know these young men, the clearer the problem became: all of them suffered from what I call, “lack of dad.”

Some of their fathers were uninvolved, alcoholic or “deadbeat” dads. Others were workaholics who were never home. Some were habitually incarcerated. Others simply hadn’t stuck around long enough to raise their sons. Over and over again I saw the same thing: young men who were wandering without direction or moral compass, in large part because they didn’t have a father at home to teach them. Many studies have confirmed my own anecdotal observations.

The evidence is clear: kids do best, in nearly every metric, when raised by two biological parents in a committed, low conflict setting. One study found that “Children with involved fathers have better social skills, more successful relationships, stronger self-esteem, more self-control and higher grades. They are less likely to be overweight, suspended from school, bully others, take drugs, engage in risky sexual behavior or commit crime.” Intact families guided by engaged fathers are the remedy, at least in my view. When I first recognized these gangsters all suffered from “lack of dad,” I started to assess my own paternal leadership. Was I leading my sons? Was I available and attentive? Was I modelling what it means to be a man, a husband and a father? Was I impressing God’s Word on my children and talking about it with them when sitting at home, walking along the road, lying down or sitting up (Deuteronomy 6:6-9)? If we want to confront one of the most prevalent root causes of crime, we need to model fatherhood for our culture and advocate policies that affirm and support families (and fatherhood) nationally.

This is a crisis we can actually address, if we choose to. I wasn’t raised in an environment in which my father was present every day. My parents divorced when I was three. But he was an important role model for me when we were together, and my grandfather, Warner, was a paternal icon. Christians have the power to come along those young men who are fatherless and provide them with the role model they need. Are we willing to do it?

This article, along with the first in this set, are two of the longest pieces I’ve written for this website, yet neither truly does justice to the complexity of the problem or potential solutions. But they’re a start. The bar is high for police officers, and it’s just as high for Christians. We’ll have no voice in our society unless we commit to the principles we are suggesting for others. Are we willing to surrender our pride? Are we willing to love our “enemies”? Are we willing to put our money where our mouths are? Are we courageous enough to address the real issues? As Christians, we must lead, and our response to this growing dilemma must reflect both the mercy and justice of God.

This article originally posted on coldcasechristianity.com.

It seems that America is now locked in an endless loop of tension and violence. Many disaffected Americans are railing out at a government they see as being abusive and vindictive. Movements like “Black Lives Matter” have pitted some African-American (and other) citizens against police officers, in a vicious cycle of street demonstrations and police force.

In some ways, these tensions are not new, and can be traced all the way to the American Civil War, through segregation, the Civil Rights Movement up to today. Americans have always been deeply divided on issues of race, and equal rights.

Now, police are being targeted in random shootings by those who feel anger at what they view as a system of oppression and tyranny.

The question is, where will all of this end?

There are really two facets to this situation that must be explored if we hope to understand the roots of this predicament.

Racism and Prejudice

What very few people stop to consider is the roots of all so-called “racial” prejudice. As Bible-believing Christians, we believe that God “has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). From one man, and one woman, all of the more than seven billion people on planet earth have descended. That makes all of us related by blood. We are all part of the same race: The Human Race!

Racial prejudice comes mainly out of evolutionary teachings. If you study the roots of the Eugenics movement, you will see that it is based in the view that some people groups are more highly evolved than others. Very few people know the full title of Charles Darwin’s ground-breaking 1859 book on evolution. It is called, “On Origin of Species, by Way of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.”

Over 150 years of evolutionary teaching has saturated our culture, and has convinced many that we must struggle for the strongest races to survive. The solution to prejudice is found in the hope offered in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Not only are we all equal in creation, and therefore equal in value, the Apostle Paul declared, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28).

Anarchy vs. Totalitarianism

The other consideration in this situation is the age-old struggle between a desire for freedom from authority (on the one hand) and a demand for supreme authority by the State (on the other). This tension has always existed in every society. There is a rogue spirit in humankind that wants to be free from the bonds of restriction and law. But a lawless society, where everyone makes up their own rules (moral relativism), and where people’s passions run unchecked (hedonism), is not tenable. No civilization can bear up under the weight of an antinomian mindset (a believe that all law is bad).

When a culture begins to shake itself from moral law, it soon finds itself at the mercy of an ever-encroaching government that seeks to provide stability and regulation. The response to anarchy is always totalitarianism, and the response to tyranny is almost always rebellion, which leads to the cycle of more tyranny.

This situation is only remedied when people recognize that there is a universal moral law that exists outside of themselves, and to which they are all subservient. Once again, we find the solution to both extremes within the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. The entire “Sermon on the Mount,” puts external law in the only place where it ultimately works; inside the human heart.

Until the evil of the heart is addressed, we are simply trying to put a cultural bandage on a proverbial brain tumor. No amount of political posturing will make bad people want to do good. It is only when the human heart is changed by love that we will hope to see citizens desire to do good, rather than harm, to their neighbor. It is only when we forgive, rather than seeking another eye or tooth in retaliation for harm, that we can end the vicious cycle of bloodshed and violence.

Ultimately, Christianity provides a totally unique remedy in the history of ideas. Every other worldview teaches that we must solve our own problems through human effort and initiative. Christianity, in contrast, presents us as the heart of the problem, not the solution. The Bible insists that it is only through humility and repentance that we will find healing for our own souls, and then be able to extend that grace and healing to others.

May God grant us that grace of repentance and humility as we seek to walk through the turbulent days that lie ahead.