I write to remind you of something you would rather forget. One year ago this week (August 3, 2019) a young man drove over 600 miles from the Dallas area to El Paso, Texas, with murder in his heart. He had written a 2300 word diatribe, posted online, repeating racist slander against Hispanic people whom he claimed were “invading” America.
His white-supremacist rant repeated ultra-nationalist ideas which have been a rhetorical staple of bloggers and some pretty famous politicians. The language used by these writers and speakers referred to our neighbors to the south as animals, thugs, and rapists. He embraced this hate-filled demagoguery and acted on it.
We remember how he entered a Walmart store in El Paso with an AK-47 rifle, intent on killing as many people of Hispanic descent as he could. He shot and killed 23 human beings that day. Racial hatred led to mass murder.
This incident raises questions we’d rather not think about. Has bigotry become public policy? Does U.S. immigration policy dehumanize immigrants, refugees and brown-skinned people? Is it only a matter of degree, from dehumanization, to a tolerance of tribal warfare and ethnic cleansing? Is the mass shooting in El Paso a portent of things to come?
No one reading this would say that it is right to murder peaceful citizens and foreign guests. Mass shootings are abnormal and unacceptable by any rational standard. Murder is wrong. Human life is sacred, a gift from our Creator.
But events like this raise the question, yet again, of our Christian responsibilities in politics and the importance of compassionate immigration policies. They force us to think about the sources of hatred and bigotry in public life, and of the regrettable divisions in American society. Events like the El Paso tragedy call attention to the powerful effect of the words of leaders. Words, like beliefs, have consequences.
Somebody failed to teach that boy, that young murderer, some better words which have always been foundational. Maybe we need to be reminded of these words as we remember El Paso.
- “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Jesus said that. When he said it he was quoting the ancient law given by God. It is foundational to all human life. This applies to individuals. Does it also apply to nations? I believe it does.
- “You are to love those who are foreigners” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19). God told Moses to teach this to Israel because they, of all people, should remember how it felt to be exiles and strangers in a foreign land. Xenophobia has no place in a Christian’s life, or in our national life, if our polices are informed by the values of the Bible.
- “From one man he (God) made all the nations” (Acts 17:26). Biologically, there is only one race, the human race. Charles Darwin popularized theories of race and of white supremacy. If human beings are not the special creation of God, and if evolution is true, then racism is one of its logical outcomes.
The El Paso murders force us to think about these things. They remind us of the dangerous trajectory of racial prejudice. They call us to remember God’s Word which says that every human being is a relative of ours. We are all equal in value before our Creator, who is “rich in mercy toward all who call upon him” (Romans 10:12).
Pastor Randy Faulkner