Christians, Justice, and the Zimmerman trial

I wanted to put some thoughts out there regarding the Zimmerman trial and the public’s reaction to the verdict.  First, I’d like to share some background as to what worldview I’m coming from.  Currently, I am residing in Yangon, Myanmar and helping out a friend with his organization.  Before that, I was in Haiti for a week in early June.  Needless to say, I’ve been overseas for the majority of the trial, gratefully.  I’m honestly glad I was not in the US, in particular in Florida where I happen to live so I’m sure there would have been more controversy there than in most of the country. 

Also, I am a Christian in my profession of faith and believe very strongly in Jesus as my Lord and Savior.  With this in mind, in the Christian faith as well as any faith or belief system or non-belief system as the case may be more and more in post-Christendom Europe and America, there are many beliefs within the bigger belief set that can contradict one another severely. 

For instance, within the Christian belief system, I’ve heard both Republicans and Democrats say they couldn’t see or believe that any Christian would be on the other side of the political aisle as themselves.  That’s just one example from the Christian side.  There are countless others to be sure.

 

Don’t worry though, atheists and human secularists have contradictions as well.  For example, for as long as I can remember, evolutionists have said we evolved from monkeys.  Now they’re saying we evolved from fish.  In another, more politicized issue European advocates have decried the outcome of a survey in some European countries that showed more girl babies than boy babies were being aborted.  People even went to the streets to protest this.  Let me get this straight, you want abortion to be legal and you refer to yourself as pro-choice.  Then it is found that people often make the CHOICE to abort girl babies rather than boy babies and you’re protesting the very right you wanted in the first place.  This doesn’t sound very logical from a group that typically sees themselves as intellectually superior to Christians due to not believing in some non-existent God, does it?

Alright, now that I’ve established my worldview that I’m coming from and the fact that I’ve largely been on the outside world of the Zimmerman case, I’ll share some observations I’ve made over the last day or so.  Many of my friends have posted comments on facebook supporting the verdict and a few have posted things decrying the verdict.  This is largely due to the fact that a majority of my friends are conservative and a few are liberal.  Some of the comments have just bothered me, so I decided to post a few tweets that link to my facebook account just to have some other viewpoint shared among my friends who may not have one other liberal friend.  I have been informed by a few that I am the only liberal person they know.  Similarly, some of my friends that I’ve met on previous trips are incredibly liberal, maybe I should send a friend request from one of my conservative friends so they can get at least a conservative comment every once in a while.

I have some basic questions, and maybe you can help answer them so I can know if they are actual facts or just biased information.  First off, did the police tell Zimmerman to stay in his car when he called and reported Trayvon as walking suspiciously in his neighborhood?  If he did, what was their response?  From what I’ve heard, and please, please, please correct me if I’m wrong and point me to a source that says differently, he did call the police and the police replied and advised him to simply stay in his car.  Is this correct or incorrect?  I really want to get the facts and I know both sides are biased so I want to work with the facts first. 

If that is in fact true, that the police told Zimmerman to stay in his car and he instead went out of his car towards Trayvon, that alone should throw up some red flags.  I understand that a lot of his defense was that Zimmerman was acting out of self-defense, it was proven that he shot Trayvon from the ground which means we can assume that Trayvon was on top of him.  Alright, let’s run with that for a moment.  Say Trayvon did attack him as Zimmerman claims he did.  Couldn’t that have been avoided pretty easily if Zimmerman had followed the policeman’s directions?  As a kindergarten teacher, it drives me nuts when my students don’t follow directions.  When I used to teach fifth grade it drove me even crazier due to the fact they knew better.  Kindergarten I don’t get as mad because part of it is just that they’re five and don’t know how to follow directions in the first half of the school year.  By the third quarter at the latest though I expect them to know how to follow directions by then and am frustrated when they don’t.

If I am justifiably upset when a fifth grader doesn’t choose to follow directions and even have come to expect my kindergarteners after a couple of years of teaching that grade to be able to follow directions by third quarter at the latest, what’s Zimmerman’s excuse?  There is even a place on the kindergarten report card that measures their skills that says ‘Can follow directions’ that you have to mark as passing or failing depending on how they’re doing.  Not all but the vast majority of my students pass that particular skill by the third quarter, and I’m sure most of the other K teachers would tell you the same were you to ask them.  Of course, there are always those few students or one student, if you’re lucky in a particular year, who don’t pass the ol’ ‘can follow directions’ skill.  Hopefully though, by the end of their elementary career they’ve figured out how to follow basic directions.  It’s a pretty key skill to have for life in my opinion.  Now, I’ve taught fifth grade in the past as I previously mentioned, so I know for a fact that if that skill were on the fifth grade report card there would still be a few students who would not pass that skill.  Maybe Zimmerman was one of those students when he was younger, I really can’t say.

As those students get older, sometimes they still struggle with following directions.  I would even argue that some legitimately can’t help it.  For those particular students, sometimes medication can help, but this can be abused very easily and doesn’t work in every case anyways.  Needless to say, they may be people who probably shouldn’t be given a gun when they’re older.  I understand gun rights as many of my friends own guns and their argument for self-defense I even understand sometimes.  Some people probably shouldn’t be given guns anyhow though, right?  Would background checks kill the industry if most gun owners are law-abiding citizens anyways?

Okay, getting a little off track there, sorry about that.  I’ll get back to the original argument for everyone’s sake.  If Zimmerman had been told by his girlfriend or some random person to stay in his car, then maybe it would make sense for him to get out.  One could argue that he might possess better judgement than his girlfriend or another friend in that case.  The police are a different matter though surely, aren’t they?  They’re not above the law by any means, but as the enforcers of the law, it’s probably a good idea to listen to them regarding a questionable situation, right?  Would he have gotten out of his car and went towards Trayvon if he was unarmed to begin with?  Would the story and the verdict have been different if they both were armed or neither of them were armed?

Now, let’s do a little exercise that most everyone has heard of if they’ve lived past the age of 12 or perhaps even younger.  Let’s switch roles for a minute in regards to Trayvon and Zimmerman.  What if Trayvon had been the one who was told by the police to stay in his car?  Trayvon now is the one who is armed, he’s been told explicity by the police to stay in his car.  Then, he decides to completely ignore the police’s advice and go towards Zimmerman.  This time, since we’ve switched roles, Zimmerman is unarmed.  Zimmerman starts a fight and Trayvon shoots him in self-defense which is proved by forensics because he shot Zimmerman from underneath him.  Would the verdict have been different?  Would the same conservative Christians proclaim that justice had been served if the armed Trayvon had been acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter of Zimmerman?  To be fair, we will never know.  It is simply an exercise to help us think through this situation.  However, based on other cases, what would you personally think would’ve been the verdict?  Would it have even appeared on the news?  Would it be much of a trial at all?  These are the types of questions we need to ask in order to see if we truly want to pursue justice for all, not just for the few.

Something that is particularly ironic to me in regards to some of my more conservative leaning friends; is that now they’re apparently worried about justice.  Some have even gone so far in previous conversations as to say they don’t want to hear about the whole social justice movement because they think it gets too much attention as it is.  I believe that person I’m thinking in particular was referring to social justice just in the states, not even overseas although I don’t remember discussing that aspect so I could be way off there.  

In conclusion, my argument completely falls apart if those first few 'facts' are actual facts or made up based on bias.  Anyone know where they can point me to find those facts regarding the call to the police and their advice?  If those aren't the facts then like I said that argument is completely invalid.  If those are the facts however, I urge you to consider my argument, whether you agree with it or not.  

Sometimes I feel the need to challenge and question the status quo.  In short, I would like to see Christians everywhere defend minorities, blacks in particular, as passionately as they do white people or Hispanics that look pretty close to white, particularly compared to the other party.  I long for justice for all, but admittedly I'm usually more concerned about justice for the outcasts of any society.  

It seems to me, in my very limited experience, that unfortunately many people are more concerned with justice for the majority or even the wealthy as opposed to being concerned with justice for the minorities.  Obviously, there's a balance that needs to be reached and the original idea is justice for all.  Not just for the outcasts, but also not just for the wealthy or majority people group.  I listen to a couple of different podcasts by conservative Christian organizations and many times either the host or people calling in will complain about higher taxes on the rich and how unfair they are.  That's fine if you want to complain about that, some of it I would even agree with as being justified.  However, I wish the same people or even other listeners of these shows would complain just as loudly about how the poor are often underpaid or how minimum wage is often not enough to make ends meet when you are supporting a family.