I’ve been traveling for two weeks and hadn’t intended to write until I get back on Monday, but the acquittal on all charges of the murderer George Zimmerman in the slaying of Trayvon Martin has me stunned and shaken. I’ll have more to say on this — much more — but what I will say for now is that on a rainy, dark night, this man profiled, chased down, disobeyed the authorities by leaving his truck to go after an innocent boy walking home from a convenience store in his own father’s neighborhood, and then shot him straight through the heart. He is a pathetic wannabe cop who was armed and looking for trouble and when he found a Black kid wearing a hoodie, he thought he found it.
A boy is dead, a family shattered, and a killer freed. But the God of righteousness and truth sees all and knows all, and he knows what happened. George Zimmerman, a white man — and no, his half-Latino ethnicity doesn’t make him anything less than a member of the privileged, powerful majority culture — may walk free today, and Black men continue to have reason to walk in fear.
I am ashamed, and I am sickened. I pray for peace, but I cannot blame those in the Black community especially and in the community of those who love righteousness who react with anger and a sense of betrayal. George Zimmerman may have been found not guilty, but he knows and God knows — and thinking people know — that only by the blood of Christ can he ever be found innocent of the thuggish killing of a 17-year-old boy who just wanted to get home by the end of halftime to watch a game with his dad.
My country is long overdue for a collective act of mourning and repentance. God help us all.