People just keep on killing Travon Martin.
Though not his body, mind you. Too many now, 17 months later, are simply content to destroy the sum total of his young life.
Today, I saw a photo going around Facebook, showing him shirtless and flipping off the camera and all looking tough, next to a smiling, clean-cut portrait of George Zimmerman in a suit.
The juxtaposition, was being used as some sort of evidence, supporting Zimmerman, and making some case for Travon somehow deserving his death two Februaries ago. The unspoken implication was, “See, he’s all thugged-out, with his shirt off, and with his middle fingers up: Of course he was up to no good that night.”
It breaks my heart as a pastor, and as a Christian…
… because I know better.
I’ve ministered to hundreds and hundreds of young men over the past 15 years.
Many of them had troubled backgrounds.
Many of them had violent pasts.
Many of them had drug problems.
Many of them hung with the wrong people.
Many of them dressed like gangstas.
Many of them broke the law.
Many of them flipped off the camera, and cussed, and tried to look tough.
And none of them, would have deserved to die, unarmed and alone, walking that same Florida street that same night, simply because of those things.
In the very same way that an alcoholic is not instantly responsible for any car accident they are involved in, simply because they’ve battle previously alcoholism, and in the same way that a girl who has slept with lots of guys, is not automatically to blame for placing herself in a position to be assaulted, we have no right to use anything from this young man’s past, to try to justify his death.
Our pasts mistakes do not tell the bigger story of our lives. Why are we insisting that Travon Martin’s, should tell the bigger story of his death?
It’s horrible enough that two people had a deadly encounter, that we will never really have both sides of, but the fact that we feel the need to blame a young victim who cannot speak for himself, seems like insult to deadly injury, and to his family, and it reflects our inability to live with unanswered questions.
It’s very similar to the way we often blame rape victims for their promiscuous pasts, or their revealing clothing choices… I don’t see it helping anyone, and I see nothing resembling Jesus in it.
As a pastor, I’m saddened for we as a people, who need so desperately to feel good, or relieved, or let off-the-hook after tragedies like this; that we must find justifiable reasons, where there simply may be none.
Instead of engaging in real dialogue, in response to the swirling storm of racial divides, and fear, and violence that has come on in the shooting and trial’s aftermath, we simply want to find a neat villain and move on.
Things just aren’t that easy.
Romans 3:23 says: For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.
Translation: We’re all thugs.
Fortunately for you and me, none of us are defined by the worst things we have done, and all of us who have made horrible, reprehensible, regrettable mistakes, live lives that are far bigger and far greater and far more meaningful than them.
I have to believe this is true for both George Zimmerman and Travon Martin.
Christians are supposed to be a people of Grace, of Hope, of Redemption.
I believe all people deserve this from us. I believe Jesus demands it from us.
We need to stop blaming the victim, stop killing dead people, and get onto the tough, deep, difficult work, of speaking across the divides of the living.
