Editorial

Life after Dallas

Posted

Last week’s killing of five police officers in Dallas invites a moment’s pause for our nation. As the largest single killing of law enforcement since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 many Americans are rightly concerned about what it means for our country.

What principally bears recalling is precept of the 5th commandment—a marker of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The killing of innocent people is always and everywhere wrong. No protest or payback or set of circumstances can justify killing the innocent. As even civil law recognizes, these killings take on an even more egregious character in that police were targeted. The police, as agents of the state, must be afforded even greater protections in a free and just society. They protect the common good and so attacks on them must be seen as especially injurious to society.

Legitimate grievances about racial injustice in our country obviously do not warrant such heinous attacks. While we must work for ever greater racial harmony, one cannot but remain disappointed that more progress in this area has not been made by this administration. It will be one of the great failures of the President’s administration that he has been unable to foster—and instead has perhaps deepened — racial tension in our country.

Christians offer the example of Jesus whose answer to injustice was patient suffering in love. More people in our time need to turn to the Gospel instead of violent protest when they meet injustice and suffering in their own lives.