I didn’t realize what I was watching, at first. The video was tweeted with no caption beyond #AhmaudArbery. I watched a man lose his life. I saw two men take it from him.
The viral video records the February 23 death of Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of Travis and Gregory McMichael. Two days after the video’s eventual release on May 5, the father and son were arrested and charged murder and aggravated assault.
The story has ripped and gripped the hearts of Americans. It seems, in some part, that the case had been all but buried until the video surfaced and garnered mass outcries for action. The event screams of pain and injustice. A young black man, not yet 26 years old, goes for a jog and does not return. A father and son mount up in a pick-up truck with guns in hand believing they have both right and cause to take justice into their own hands. There is much to lament, and the church should weep with those who weep. But at the heart of this event, like the lynchings of decades past, lies a question of gross injustice. Who bears the sword?
Paul writes in Romans 13:1-4:
“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” (ESV)
Governmental authority has been given by God to promote order and punish the guilty. There is no list of exceptions; no list of peoples exempt from the cause of justice; and none who take up justice apart from the authority of God. When private citizens take the law into their own hands, they usurp the authority of God.
Those who read themselves into their story as those who execute justice—who should be feared and have the right to command—must recognize that this text does not speak in support of their cause but in its condemnation.
The follower of Christ is not one who takes up the final task of judge nor avenger. Origen writes that Christ, “nowhere teaches that it is right for His own disciples to offer violence to any one, however wicked. For He did not deem it in keeping with such laws as His, which were derived from a divine source, to allow the killing of any individual whatever.”[1]
There is of course a genuine question of injustice on the part of governing authorities. It is not always private citizens who wrongly swing the sword, and the authority that has been given by God is not without its limits. Those that abuse the authority given to them by God will stand in judgment before him. It is injustice at this level that has led to outcry. Vigilantism at large—be it the lynchings of the Ku Klux Klan or the police patrols of the Black Panthers—come, in part, through a mistrust of the justice system. It is no difficult task to demonstrate these failings along the American “color-line.”[2] Especially as injustice, more often than not, favors those in power. But this too will be righted, either here on earth or more surely before the throne of God.
In that fateful moment, injustice favored two men who stole authority. It favored those who stole Ahmaud Arbery’s very life. In the eternal moment, justice will not be usurped. God’s wrath will be poured out on the wicked. Those that seek justice will be approved by God. And those that find justice, do best to find it in the blood of Christ, and to seek it with him.
This resource is part of the series More than Imago Dei: Theological Explorations on Race. Click here to explore more resources from this series.
Paul Morrison serves as lead pastor at Grantwood Community Church in suburban Cleveland, OH. He is also a co-founder and director of the Ohio Theological Institute. Paul holds a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a member of the St. Peter Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
Notes:
[1] Origen, “Origen Against Celsus,” trans. Frederick Crombie In , The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume IV: Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 467.
[2] W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 2007), 20.
