Ain't No Love In The City

The abyss of our natures can only be filled by Christ - O. Chambers

The younger girl killed in this story had attended our middle school in the District where I work. She hadn't befriended a lot of kids. Sounds like she was with us for a year and then moved elsewhere, back to the 'hood. Where she was murdered. Only a few kids saw me when they heard. One aspect of what made this so sad was that her death seemed be silenced by her lack of being known. She was with us and left. Not many memories of her remained. But for the kids who did know her, they cried out like Abel's blood from the ground.  She loved to sing according to her two best friends at our school. Her spilled blood laments. "I was somebody, I am not a statistic. I have a soul."      

I have worked with teenagers for 30 years. I have earned the right to be heard and heeded. I know of what I speak and write. I have worked hard, studied hard, and sacrificed more than anyone would know to be in this role.  Let me say clearly what we all already know. America is in serious trouble. And a simple slogan of "Making America Great Again" from Trump ain't going  to solve what ails us. Neither are better trade deals. It is almost laughable if it wasn't so sad. What ails us is in our souls. We are sick. And so is the whole world. It is not mental illness for most of humanity. It is moral illness.

Guns being used to murder, like abortion instruments used to kill, are the final tools of a long succession of moral missteps and awry assumptions. Putting a Conservative on the Supreme Court ain't going to fix it. I wish it would. One turn of the screw and everything A-OK. Fools! A curse on the hypocrisies of the Left and Right houses. 

Political machination and manipulation is too easy. What is hard is to examine our own souls and do some serious self-inspection. We cooperate with God when He tells us who we are. We don't run, we don't hide. We don't put up our flimsy fig leaf excuses. We don't point to the other. We say, "I am the man." We face the facts and confess we are individually and collectively fallen. We acknowledge the wound and the war within us--so that it does not cause casualties of others. Either we fight the war inside or we take it public. The Scriptures state that if we repress rather than confess, that we will outwardly express our inner reality.

It is not really our work to cleanse the wound for we cannot be our own souls Archimedes. We cannot stand in the world to repair what is wrong with us. We don't get it. We are the problem. And just because we are the problem does not mean that we are the solution, too. No, we need a medicine that is stronger than what resides in self-medication. We need soul medication from on high. You are fallen morally. I am fallen morally. We can be forgiven by faith in Christ. That's it. That's the Gospel. Everything else is too weak to deal with what is wrong. 

Social Media has handed the tools of technology to madmen and women. We can attack, assume, berate, and condemn from our smart phones and computers. Fail to see that what ails the other is what ails us too. A hardness that comes from being hurt. And rather than it make us kinder, it makes us harsher. Rather than inculcate love, it fosters hatred. Rather than challenging our assumption, it confirms our biases and prejudices. Ain't no love online either. When the tech gurus promise a brighter future from the lights of digital fire, let us consider that fire both heals and hurts. It creates and destroys. Prometheus asks us to what end to you desire of your fire? To build or destroy, for I can do both.

I speak and write as a man who has a past of brokenness, a present of brokenness, and a future of brokenness. Let us not forsake the one broken for us.