How much do we, the people of the greatest nation on Earth, value a human life?
The answer is: that depends.
In a U.S. court of law, when a manufacturer, tobacco company, car dealer or chemical polluting plant is paying out a wrongful death settlement, a life is often valued highly by a jury or judge swayed by a barrister’s arguments.
In war, on a battlefield 6,000 or 7,000 miles away from home, not nearly enough.
Find a homeless man who died in his sleep in a ballpark dug out, not so much.
An unwanted and aborted fetus, not at all.
What can we muster for a 17-year-old Valdosta, Georgia, teen found dead in a rolled-up wrestling mat at a high school gym?
A 26-year-old, black, inner city man potentially involved in nefarious enterprise? That is another whole matter.
What if, hypothetically, it were an eight-month pregnant white woman, caught in gang-related crossfire as she drives home from dinner in the inner city? Probably a great deal.
How about a well-liked 23-year-old walking up to a car in Wilmington’s Houston Moore housing complex?
The deaths pile up, unexplained. Grief mounts.
How about a huge, angry teenager, who just robbed a store of cigars and, walking down the center of the street, is confronted by a police officer of another race?
A 17-year-old football player from Bladenboro who washes and sets out his uniform for the next day’s game, goes out for doctor advised night exercise and is found dead, covered in fire ants, hanging from a swing set in the center of a white trailer park?
A 12-year-old child playing with a pellet gun on a Cleveland playground?
A father of six, selling cigarettes tax-free on the streets of Staten Island, a borough of New York?
Is it any wonder this country is erupting in anger? In widening protests, marches and die ins?
One after the other, a long, ragged succession of heartbreaking deaths tears away the mask hiding something so ugly.
The injustice of it is staggering. Has it always occurred, but not been reported? Has our nation always been so callous about life, or at least non-white life? [You know the answer.]
When do these lives begin to matter?
This is the land of the free, the brave, the land of We the People.
In America, when do we really begin to place a value on each and every life, and not just give it empty lip service?
Each life is someone’s child or grandchild, a cousin, a father, a friend and so on. Each precious life was crafted by the Maker, who cares so much about us, He keeps count of the number of hairs on our heads; it says so in my Bible. If He knows when even a sparrow falls from the sky, how must He be grieved with each successive death?
Personally, I have had enough. Put a fork in me, I am done. We as a city, county, state and nation must change.
Our young people are the hope of our future. Yes, each story is unique, each contains mitigating circumstances, but until each life is valued, regardless of color, socioeconomic status, or nefarious behavior, real or perceived, America is broken.
Will more awareness and laws against racial profiling, (legislation proposed by Rodney Moore, a Mecklenburg Rep, for 2015) or more police body cams really make a difference, or instead is this a heart matter?
Where’s the evidence of the love most of America will celebrate in just one week? What is Christmas, if not about love? “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believed in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Love came to Earth in the body of a baby born to a virgin to redeem the world from sin. He is love. We are called to love one another as ourselves. When do our prejudices, fears and hatred of anyone not like us overrule that God-given commandment to love one another?
Here the week leading up to Christmas, I leave you with a scripture to ponder:
“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NKJV).
Amen.
