By David Hegg
Edmund Burke, the 18th-century British statesman, is the first one credited with saying, “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” It looks like we are rushing to prove him right.
Some years ago, I quit playing racquetball for a couple of reasons. First, I moved away from both the club I frequented and my playing partners. But I was ready to quit anyway for the second reason. The game had become quite predictable. I became convinced that racquetball has only a few dozen situations that are played over and over and over again. After some time, my playing partners and I learned how to address every situation. Simply put, we learned how to face each challenging serve and kill shot, and without the element of surprise, the game ceased to be engaging.
Like racquetball, history has a way of putting us in the same situations over and over and over. And, as Burke so cogently pointed out, if we face each situation as though for the first time, never learning from experience, we are never going to overcome the challenges each situation poses.
Is it just me, or are we seeing the same episodic miniseries being played out in cities across the country, starring law enforcement officers of whatever level, and a group of people who don’t like them or what they’re doing? What’s going on? Haven’t we learned anything from the previous episodes? Apparently not, because we keep seeing the same outrage, the same inflammatory charges, the same politicizing of the events, and – tragically – the same evidence of our societal loss of moral integrity and neighborly love. Most of all, we continue to see death and the unrestrained hatred that both fuels it and is fueled by it.
While there are myriad issues involved in these events that pit police against citizens, leftists against conservatives, and minority against majority, I want to address one common to all of them. In each case, when conflict explodes into crime, what we see is immediate, while what we actually come to know as fact takes days, weeks, even months to materialize.
As one pundit put it, there is a gap between the optics and the facts. We see it every time. Someone shoots someone else, and immediately, the visual, whether fixed in video or painted in our minds by those describing the event, fuels outrage. This outrage constructs a narrative that plays well, and forms the basis for protests, movements, political pronouncements, and, sadly, often further violent speech and action. And now artificial intelligence interjects great suspicion into what we claim to see and assume is true.
There is no denying that a brutish form of intentional hatred is ripping our country apart, one street, one city, one podcast at a time. But the real danger is a new, sweeping belief that violence is not only allowable but also necessary to gain the power to eradicate what activists see as the greater evil. It is shocking to see groups of angry people use violent words and despicable actions in an attempt to bring about peace. Have we lost our minds? Or do we think violence can change minds, or replace hatred with care and civil concern? More likely, those for whom violent speech and actions are first-line weapons use them to gain the power necessary to rid the country of those who with whom they differ. And frankly, that has never been in America’s playbook, and it shouldn’t be now.
Perhaps we need to be reminded that we claim to be “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This once meant that in America, everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Optics may raise ratings, but the sentiment they raise must not become a substitute for truth. In our system, public outrage is not “proof,” regardless of the optics. We are a nation of laws and must trust the legal process, doing all we can within the bounds of law to make it fair and just for all, if we intend to dwell in peace.
Our nation is plummeting down a steep hill, pushed ever faster by the fuel of seething anger, explosive outrage, and a growing belief that violence is an acceptable response to injustice. It isn’t, but neither is turning our eyes away as injustice continues. We must learn from each situation to get back on the right track. After all, we have enough history behind us to learn from, and – hopefully – enough unmade history ahead to ensure America will continue to be a place where there is real freedom, and actual liberty, and equal justice for all.
Local resident David Hegg is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church. “Ethically Speaking” appears Sundays.
