Hate Crimes

This week three black teens and one black juvenile were charged with the vicious torture and attack of an eighteen year old mentally disabled white man. The attackers posted their attack on social media with expletive taunts against Donald Trump and against white people. This same week, Dylann Roof entered the sentencing stage of his trial for killing nine black people at a historically black church. Roof showed no remorse in representing himself and even stated "there is nothing wrong with me psychologically". Both of these cases have been labeled "hate crimes" and have sparked renewed debate over this topic.

The FBI defines a hate crime as “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” The FBI goes on to say that hate crimes are the highest priority of the FBI’s Civil Rights program, not only because of the devastating impact they have on families and communities, but also because groups that preach hatred and intolerance can plant the seed of terrorism here in our country.

This concept of hate crimes is fascinating to me because pretty much all crimes are borne into attitudes of the heart. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus identifies the incipient reasons why we do what we do. Whereas the legalists of his day focused on the outward, Christ focused on the inward causes. In any outward action, you need to start working your way backwards. For example, murder is the supreme atrocity of taking another person's life, but murder moves backward to hate, hate moves back to resentment, resentment moves back to insecurity, and so on and so forth.

The cure for hate crimes is not to react to the outward crimes but to start at the root cause. The seemingly best of us are fully capable of committing the worst of crimes and recognizing that is the first step. Repentance has to start with recognition. But recognition doesn't do it by itself because we cannot cure the evils of our own heart. It has to move towards transformation and only supernatural transformation can change these deep seated attitudes of the heart. The gospel of Jesus Christ changes people - even the worst of us. It breaks down the dividing walls.

Jameel McGee, a black man was imprisoned by a white police officer, Andrew Collins who falsified a drug police report. He served four years in jail. Collins eventually admitted he falsified the report and served a year and a half in jail himself. McGee when he got out sought to "hurt Collins" when he got out. What happened - Collins apologized, McGee accepted the apology and today the two of them are close friends. The gospel does stuff like that.