Love Without Justice is Baloney.
Gary Smith’s “Radical Compassion: Finding Christ in the
Heart of the Poor” has been an important book for our practice of hospitality
at Manna House.
Smith writes, “Among the poor, the
church learns to be indignant at the sight of discarded human beings, and it is
taught to passionately challenge systems and structures that produce such human
beings. It is one thing to practice
charity, to give a poor person some bread or to treat the same person with
respect. It is quite another thing to
challenge a system in which people are hungry, in which some can be rich and
many are poor. As Cardinal Sin of the Philippines
once said, ‘Love without justice is baloney.’”
Manna House
supports the Workers Interfaith Network in its efforts for worker justice and a living wage. Manna House supports the MidSouth Peace and Justice
Center
This morning at Manna House, the
conversation in the front yard and on the porch turned to the events in Baltimore ,
beginning with the death of Freddie Gray who died from injuries sustained while
in police custody. Among his injuries, a
severed spinal cord. His death follows many more of African American men and women at the hands of the police.
“When did ‘Protect and Serve’
become ‘Judge and Execute’?” a guest at Manna House asked.
“Cops using
too much force” said another, “Helluva of way for that man to die. People just ain’t gonna accept this anymore.”
Other
guests talked about the times they’ve been harshly treated by the police in Memphis . Several shared that they have been taken on a
“rough ride” in a squad car after being arrested. Freddie Gray’s injuries may have happened in
such a “rough ride” when cops take sharp turns and made sudden hard stops with
their police car so that a handcuffed prisoner gets bounced around in the
vehicle.
Another said, “I’d get arrested and
in the summer they’d leave me to sit in the back of the car with all the windows
up and no air conditioning. Man, it’d
get so hot. They thought it was funny.”
“People can
only take so much for so long,” said a guest who lived in Baltimore
for a while. “No jobs. No hope.
And you keep stopping us and arresting us. Now you’re seeing what happens. Those people up there; they’re not playing.”
All of
these guests are black. I’m white. Today, as has been the case for many years, I’ve
learned a great deal from these teachers on the streets.
“I’m
tired. We’re tired of all this,” a guest
said, “This city, like Baltimore ,
is brutal. It’s a hard city. I just want
some respect.”
These
voices of these black men and women need to be heard. White people especially need to shut up and
listen. A change needs to come. Their heartache and their analysis come right
out of Psalm 55. God is with them.
“My heart is in anguish within me,
the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me. And I say, ‘O that I had wings like a
dove! I would fly away and be at rest;
truly I would flee far away… I would
hurry to find a shelter for myself from the raging wind and tempest. … for I see violence and strife in the
city. Day and night they go around it on
its walls [note this would be the police force keeping security from atop the
city walls] and iniquity and trouble are within it; ruin is in its midst;
oppression and fraud do not depart from its marketplace. … But I call upon God,
and the Lord will save me. Evening and
morning and at noon I utter my
complaint and moan, and God will hear my voice.”
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