 Welcome to this episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. This is kind of a special episode because I'm here with Zach Johnson to talk about a current event. How would Jesus respond to the news that Derek Chauvin has been convicted of murder? So Zach is dean of students at Sattler College. But especially relevant for this interview is the fact that Zach used to work for the US Air Force and then ended up leaving the Air Force as a conscientious objector. So Zach, maybe you could start just give us a brief run up the events of the death of George Floyd as murdered by Derek Chauvin. Yeah, I'll check. I know whoever's listening, you probably know a lot about it as well, and you could read about it. But I'll just give like a 30 seconds of refresh. So George Floyd was an African-American man murdered by police during arrest after a store clerk alleged that he passed him a $20 counterfeit bill. And so Derek Chauvin was one of the four police officers who arrived on that scene and ended up, there's a video clip of this if you haven't watched it. Viewer discretion is advised of one of the officers, Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds was the time count. And then after his death, many of us remember in the summer protests against the police brutality just sparked up all over the country, especially police brutality towards African-Americans. And this sort of spread rapidly across the nation. And there is also a clip of people quoting him and that as he was dying, he said, I can't breathe, which was used as sort of the rallying cry across these different protests. Yeah, so it really became a key national thing, part of the national consciousness and part of the whole movement. Nationally and internationally, I mean, I was watching some of you might be familiar with the artwork that got passed around. There was a sort of a painting you could do of George Floyd's portrait. And that started popping up all over the place. India in Southeast Asia and Africa and Europe. So it became an international event as well. Yeah, so this gets global attention. Recently gotten a huge amount of national attention from federal government, high-ranking officials. Just as a side note. I happen to be in Minneapolis right during this as well. And so if you were in Minneapolis, there was many cities had to put on curfews and pull out the National Guard in response to this, which was also controversial in how the response was to the demonstrations. Right. And yeah, so the national reaction was huge. And then just to summarize the recent legal proceedings, so April 20, he was convicted, second-degree murder, third-degree murder, as well as a charge of manslaughter. None of these charges entailed the direct intent to kill, but they were all in the course of a felony or complete indifference to safety. And so they got a murder charge. And they're still waiting for sentencing. There's a lot of pressure right now to sentence him to a significantly longer sentence than what would normally accompany those charges because of the high-profile case, various what they call aggravating factors. Anything else we should highlight there before we just jump into how should Christians respond? Should we celebrate this? I mean, in the course of the trial, there was actually another police shooting, multiple different shootings that occurred after this. And people have been, in the justice world, people have been pointing to the fact that if you're, I'll try to make a broad brush here because it's just not that I'm putting everyone in this category, but if you were trying to plead for Derek Chauvin's innocence, given his status as a police officer and that police officers shouldn't be convicted of these kinds of things, you would point to the fact that the jury was very scared not to pass a guilty conviction onto him because of fear of what would happen in the national scene. And so there was a lot of talk about how the justice system is not adequate to handle something like this that has ramifications at an international level. I don't know if you can imagine putting yourself as being a jury member, having that pressure on you and how much pressure there was on that jury, but that's just not that I'm not trying to take either side there, but there's a lot of talk about how to even think about justice in an equitable sort of non-biased way in this trial. Yeah, and so some people are worried that the jury verdict could be influenced by this kind of demand to find him guilty that's coming from the public rather than strict legal proceedings, which just plays into the social milieu, social tensions right now. So yeah, let's just hit it directly then. Is this something we should be celebrating? Now there's been a lot of celebration, a lot of people saying this has turned the tide for our country all the way up to a comment by Vice President Kamala Harris. She said, this is a day of justice. How should we respond? Yeah, my initial reaction to this, I know I've seen the script here, but I'm gonna go back to a story about me and the military that I think is relevant here and I know there's some apples and oranges in this analogy so I know there's a racial component to this and a domestic component, but I joined the Air Force in the wake of 9-11. Many, almost everybody in my age group has 9-11 just burned into their memory. And my first year in the Air Force was the year that President Obama successfully conducted an operation to eliminate Osama bin Laden. I don't know if you can remember that scene, I was very, very, very significant in the military community, that there was sort of this enemy of the state that had been killed, right? There's a SEAL team that went in and they straight up just, it was a elimination and they killed him there. I don't know what word you wanna use there, killed, assassinated, murdered, sent on a mission and then in response, I don't know if you remember the United States' response to this, it was a party scene. I mean, at the place I went to school, when the news came out, people were running all over the place, you know, like waving flags, singing songs to America and to celebrate that that one of America's greatest villains had fallen and Osama bin Laden was guilty of a lot of things, right? He had been played a part in orchestrating the loss of a lot of life and so this is where this whole war on terrorism comes up here but I wanna think about that in the light of what Jesus taught that anytime that we're celebrating a violent reaction to a violent crime and we're sort of celebrating the downfall of a man, I think we should definitely take a step back and look and say, hey, is this really a celebration to the destruction of life ever something that a Christian should participate in? And I wanna tell that story in light of the George Floyd and Derek Chauvin case because not the same cases but very similar, right? That George Floyd was a victim and lost his life and lost his life and whatever he did, a lot of people argue that he had it coming, right? And a lot of people argue that there's no way that response was merited, not trying to take sides here. He lost his life, so that's a mourning but then in response to that, the similar scene here and in Boston when Derek Chauvin was convicted that there were kind of fire in our, in the neighborhood we live in, there were some fireworks, there were some rallies just celebrating the verdict and I know that some people are celebrate, might be celebrating their perceived sense of justice being accomplished, you mentioned Kamala Harris and her statement there and also, but when we look at that, there are things to be celebrated but my initial reaction just in response to your question is, I think that Jesus would call us to mourn both sides of this, both sides of this case, mourning the loss of life and mourning that Derek Chauvin no longer has a free life and he's being held accountable but I think the celebration of a lifelong prison sentence is a really, really hard thing to stomach as a follower of Christ. Like why, where could we be anywhere in the realm there? And in general, even if he was not deemed guilty and released, I still think that there's a mourning in this whole response. Like there's not really a spectrum when we're celebrating throughout this whole story. Does that make sense? Yeah, there's no celebration of any of it. So I mean, we recognize the police process, the government process as something that God uses to keep some level of order but punishment is not something we celebrate. Right, it shouldn't be. I mean, some people do and they feel safer because the justice system works and I sort of acknowledge that feeling of, hey, now we know that people who commit these things won't be walking the streets and but internally, specifically like at a man pointing your celebration at a man is really, really hard for me to say, like when would Jesus ever celebrate the downfall of somebody who he was sort of in, whatever, in battle with theologically or even physically, you see his reaction just constantly mourning, you know, when he was killed, they have the lines like father forgive them, they don't know what they do. And that sentiment is just carried around, I think should be carried around by Christians everywhere in our response to injustice. Certainly I agree with your responses like this is, it's what Christianity teaches about nonviolence and so on. But how do we think about it in terms of the racial context and I'm especially thinking about the way that it could feel like neither of us are black, neither of us have had any other reason to think that we're on the wrong side of the law or whatever. So Jesus talked about going the second mile with the Romans, but he was a Jew under Roman oppression. It might've felt a little bit different if it was a Roman army officer counseling everybody else to go the second mile, because he would have been the one in the situation of power, the one benefiting from it, talking to the others. It doesn't change Jesus' message, but it kind of, it changes this social situation and I'm trying to think about how do we react to that? How do you show that it's the real thing and not just convenient for us to say? Ray, and I appreciate that you said, you were two very white people talking into this scenario and there's a few talks that came out right after the George Floyd events that really dig deep into the racial, specifically the racial issues. And many of you know that I fellowship with a group of Boston called followers of the way and a brother named Finney Caravella gave a really, a talk that I really appreciated over, we're just kind of like sorting through the different theories of racism and there's some of the options available for us to think about our, there's systemic racism. A lot of you have probably heard that term coming up here and that has also been in the academic literature. It's something called critical race theory. That's where it's coming up that racism is actually much larger than individual humans. It's built into the systems that we are part of and that we intrinsically as people are almost don't have a choice in the racism that we're a part of a system that is not, this doesn't treat everyone equally and there's not equality of outcome across race. So there's that kind of thing to work through and then there's the other individual racism component to this, right? So this would sort of, when we would be analyzing this case and we were looking at those two, the systemic race theory would say, Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd because of a much bigger system that he was a part of. And then the individual racism theory would say more that Derek Chauvin as an individual was racist, his heart was dark and this was an outcome of an individual heart. Those are kind of two poles. There's a lot of spectrum in between that. But my quick and easy, quick answer, not easy answer to this is that we as Christians should not have a misplaced hope and the criminal justice system in a scenario like this. So this is a Christian response to this, right? That our hope is truly, truly in the church and its capacity to cut across races, to cut across social classes, to cut across nationalities. And Jesus designed the church to be a transnational body bound together by baptism, right? And that is a cross-cutting institution that should provide a lot of hope to racism. Now, is the church, as I described it, if you could look at your local representations of that, is it succeeding all across the board? My general push for Christians is to say, put all of your hope eggs in the church basket to design the church as a system of hope that can capture both sides into one system at the end where maybe we'll go into the hypothetical world where maybe Derek Chauvin, now he's still living, right? Could be a transformed born-again believer in Christ and join the kingdom of God before his days are numbered and equally that those closest to George Floyd could also encounter Christ and his teachings and that they could actually reconcile and meet in this holding place called the church. That's the amazing beauty of Jesus and his teachings and the church in this scenario. Now, how does it play into the racial context here? I think the church is supposed to be the light of the light of the world, the city on the hill that is demonstrating to the world how this should be happening and that's sort of the hope of the future, right? That we can be evangelizing across race and across these different theories that are going around and that the church could really, given that racism most definitely does exist in a variety of contexts, I won't give my theory on whether it's systemic or individual or the mix of the two, maybe a little bit of both here and there, but that the church has the hope to eliminate it and not the criminal justice system. Yeah, I like that. So what you're doing is basically laying out the challenge or the objective, which is for Christians not to get the right laws pass, not to get the right laws pass, not to move through positions of power to enforce it, but to actually build the relationships and the relationships in Jesus to make the church cut across both groups and bring them together. And that's where the racism can actually be dealt with or transcended. I would, I mean, if there's any context that I think that racism could be reconciled, I would say it would be in communion, in Christ's communion over the bread and the cup where there's confession and healing and just love working through these issues as opposed to some of what we've seen in the demonstrations on the streets where there's the clashes, right? And if, I don't know if you were part of those rec or saw any of the demonstrations, there didn't seem to be a lot of hope for reconciliation in a lot of the context. There was some that was going around, the people could hug it out and then sort of listen to each other, but broadly speaking, it was much more confrontational and full of confrontational conflict as opposed to conflict that aims to reconcile. Sometimes conflict can be good, right? We experienced it in our families and in even our closest relationships. Yeah, I like the way you frame the kinds of conflict there because it's not, they're not saying be quiet and don't talk about it, but it's a very different aim for the outcome, the outcome of the talk. Yeah, and maybe I can talk a little bit about a different sort of response to this that has been popular in more of the liberal Christian world if you're willing to speak of it. I spent the last two summers down at a place called the Center for Justice and Peace Building down at a place called Eastern Mennonite University, that's in Virginia. And there was a term that was coined there by an author named Howard Zaire called Restorative Justice. And I don't know if any of you are familiar with the term restorative justice and how basically restorative justice seeks not only to punish the victim, no, punish the offender, sorry, not the victim, not punish the victim, that would be horrible, punish the offender and actually allow the victim to end to the justice process in order to invite their sort of sense of equity and justice into the situation in order to provide true healing. So you're basically adding sort of a layer to the justice system where you're saying, hey, rather than just have this punitive justice system and in the West we're really familiar with this court of law, it's really permeated our thinking like there's a judge, a jury, there's a defendant and an offender and at the end of the day it's like they'll get their sentence and that is justice, right? And they're sort of trying to add on that the victim, like what if the victim doesn't want the offender to go to jail? What if the victim wants forgiveness? What if the victim wants the offender to come to their house once a week for the next 10 years and develop a relationship as opposed to them going to jail for 10 years? So there's this concept in broader, in broader even in the liberal world where they're pushing for restorative justice into the system. And when I describe that to you restorative justice it sounds like something really to be that has a lot of merit to it and should be influencing and that's where I kind of talk about, hey, Christ justice is much, it describes restorative justice I think gets at Christ's general concept of justice a little bit more than just the pure punitive justice system but what I would say is like a pure committed follower of Christ is that with sort of going back to this hope in the church lens, is that there's actually another level after restorative justice called transformational justice that people have been, that's like the gold standard of justice, right? That once people go through whatever system this is that they come out transformed and sort of like the new creature. And that's where I think the church has immense, immense power to actually promote this thing, this idea of transformational justice where after going through the teachings of Christ not only can you be transformed like into a new creature but you can also go and hand yourself to whatever forms of justice afterwards as a transformed person. I'll share a quick story on this idea where I've had some time to go visit Pablo Yoder down in West Lala, Nicaragua. I don't know if you're familiar with the group down there. I'm familiar with some of Pablo's stories. Yeah. And so he met a man down there who had actually committed a murder in the US and fled back down to Nicaragua. He had murdered his girlfriend and their church encountered him. And I don't take all my details on this story are like 65%. So try to hold what I say with all here but I was able to speak to Paul and this man and he entered through the church, came into Christ's teachings and through discipleship the church encouraged him to actually turn himself in to inner pool after he had become a follower of Jesus. So this man goes through the church and gets transformed, goes and turns himself into inner pool as in like I'm inviting the world system of justice upon me with already having experienced this transformational aspect of it where he was no longer the invity, he was willing to face whatever consequence there was there. But what I love about this story is inner pool goes down there and they actually like let him, their sense of justice was to let him back into the community by that time he had a wife and children and that this man was transformed and justice was sort of served in the eyes of whoever was trying to chase him. And I looked at stories like that and I'm like, wow, the church really has the potential to participate in this elevated form of transformational justice that goes beyond just punitive restorative and reaches into a man, the destination of his soul, right? That's what we're getting at. And hopefully we can create a space where both sides sort of can experience that but that's a lofty thing to call people to in the context that we're talking about. It's a lofty thing but it is what God wants and it is what can be. What can be when everyone involved is willing to seek it? Yeah, well, thanks a lot for joining us. Any other comments, anything else you wanna say to the audience? Yeah, I mean, I have this little, I'll try to give a little spiel here. I have this little banner here behind me. It says, no blood but our own. And if there's ever a book that I'm gonna write, this is gonna be its title. I'm still working on sort of the process here behind it. But truly, I think we can group a lot of different worlds used by answering two questions about ourselves. One is how highly do we prioritize the relationship of humans and God? And so if you ask that question, you and I and a lot of the people that we interact with, we'd be like, man, that is the most important thing is a human relationship with God. And then the other question is how do we view our enemies and how like our neighbors and our enemies. So there's a lot of teachings in the Bible about neighbors and enemies and Jesus as like the golden rule is to love your neighbor as yourself. That's like the golden rule. A lot of us get that. And then with enemies, this is the distinctive, one of the distinctives of Christianity is that we would actually elevate when at the end of the day, we would elevate our enemies over our own physical safety. And that we actually, because we've, hopefully we have this confidence and assurance of our own salvation that if we encountered an enemy, we would say your soul is more important than my physical safety. And when you combine those two questions of elevating humanity's relationship with God and the love of enemies, we find ourselves in with this very, very unique worldview that Christ, and I would just push that Christ came to teach love of enemies and pushing people towards God through Christ, right? That Christ teaching are how we now can best understand God and his character. And in that framework, I have these little, these little pithy lines. There's this no blood but our own. That's where I think you would land there to Marlon, if I'm correct. And the guy's over it and I'm back. This perspective and but now we're really, we're fighting with people who respond differently to those questions. So there's this, so if you can imagine putting four quadrants out, four different buckets based on how those two questions are answered. So now we get a group of people who wouldn't necessarily prioritize the relationship with God, but they would sort of prioritize the love of enemies or even the love of humanity, non-violence and these sorts of things. You're beginning to see that a little bit, even I would say in the Democratic political party, you're getting a little bit of this taste of why violence and just isn't right. You've even seen in this response to this, there's a defund the police because of their use of violence. Really interesting, but I would put them in this category of as little blood as possible that they're still willing to shed blood as long as it serves some ultimate interest that they have like justice. So if they're the concept of justice, they could be saying, hey, well, maybe in certain circumstances, this is a good idea, but there are these ultimate spheres that we can, we should demand justice. And we have a lot in common with them as a group of people, but we should also, the thing that's missing is the relationship with God, right? So any sort of promoting justice outside the sphere of God is gonna fall short when our days are ended there. And then the other two, I won't go into them, but the people would answer no to both those questions, no to God and no to love of enemies or in this like as much blood as necessary, and you see some people in the demonstrations fall into this camp too, like I'm gonna go and I'll actually participate in violence and God's not really in the equation to get the means that I need for the safety of my people. And so you see sort of like a militant side of that. And then sadly, there's this other quadrant that I say they respond yes to the relationship with God and no to the love of enemies. And this is where a lot of the just war theory comes out. And I think it plays into the justice question too, right? Because people who fall into that category for the most part, and this is sad, argue for kind of get pulled into the Christian right here where they're sort of saying, hey, let's sort of defend police. There's like the Blue Life Matter movement going around here that sort of is in conflict with the Black Lives Matter. I'm just sort of pointing out. And we have a really interesting task in front of us to promote this worldview of enemy love and elevating God in the way that we respond to our thoughts of justice and the way that we respond to violence and also just putting our own safety on the line for the sake of others. And I hope that over the course of our lives that we can see more and more people who view Christ's teachings as literal can begin to operate in the world with these two answers. That's my five-minute spiel. I wanted to close this while you gave me the platform. Right? Yes, and that is, it's a very helpful way to look at the quadrants. And also, I think if you start to think through those a little bit, it explains why we're so easily kind of pulled to the kind of the classically, the left as in the, as little blood as possible, or pulled to the right because you see a few problems with the left and you see that, okay, some of these people are sincere Christians. Some of them are sincere Christians on both ends of the spectrum. And it really becomes a distraction to try to figure out which one you identify with because you got to go to a different quadrant totally together. And what's unique about, I mean, I gave many more talks on the subject and the two kingdoms theology where we're, what I would say is this no blood, but our own category of people should be the ones who don't have their hope in the state. So they don't concentrate the state or the nation. So they don't concentrate most of their time trying to influence the way that the criminal justice system does justice, right? We sort of view the church as the ultimate, the ultimate duty for us that we try to pull anybody and everyone into whether that be our enemies, someone working in the state, whether it be someone with an opposing viewpoint, we have this system that, or this, I don't want to say institution, we have the church Christ's bride that we are, we're like in charge of shepherding. And that's where our hope is. And so it's also unique to try to pull people into, I would say just entanglement with the government systems, while still learning how to love people on all sides of these quadrants, whether you take the left, the right, or the up or down, the church can hold everybody. Yeah, very good. Thank you all for joining us on this episode of Anabaptist Perspectives and we'll be back next week with more.