Christian Ethics and Police Brutality

Even after clear and recorded accounts of police brutality and abuse of authority, I still find Evangelical and Reformed Christians arguing that “not all cops” are like that. There may be “a few bad cops out there,” but there are “more good cops than bad ones,” these Christians claim.

However, as Christians who must read and submit to the Bible’s definition of sin and not our American-individualized version of it, we must understand sin in terms of both the corporate and individual, systemic and interpersonal. Others have talked about necessity of seeing sin in these multiple dimensions previously.

So, to approach the question of police brutality, we must apply a full-orbed understanding of sin.

The Total-ness of Total Depravity

The Bible does not mince words when it comes to the total-ness of sin. Sin infects every faculty of humanity — our head, heart, and will. It affects everything we create on both an individual and corporate level. It casts long shadows of oppression and injustice through underlying systems and structures that long outlive their originators.

What that means is that we should not believe that institutions and systems magically become less sinful (or sin-neutral), or that the mere passing of time whittles away sinfulness.

Sin impacts individuals as well as systems. There is no neutral zone that is safe from the reaches of sin.

The Common-ness of Common Grace

While the Bible speaks of the total-ness of sin, it also speaks clearly on the common-ness of God’s grace for all people. While not all people receive the fullness of God’s grace in redemption, the Bible is clear that God gives rain to the just and the unjust. Mysteriously, God still restrains sin and evil in this broken world through our imperfect and sinful actions.

In fact, God still holds people responsible for doing what is right in this world. There is no “it is what it is” in the realm of common grace. Justice and righteousness must be upheld, even in this broken world. God hates dishonest scales and the mocking of the poor.

Apples and Oranges

If sin is both individual and systemic, then the statement “not all cops” is only applicable to an individual analysis of police brutality, but not a systemic analysis. That would be like comparing apples to oranges. Individually, it may be true that good cops exist. However, the individual fact of good cops does not address whether the underlying system is good or bad. That involves an entirely different set of questions.

Knowing History Prevents Mythology

History is not only doomed to repeat itself if we do not learn from it, but we also are doomed to create and propagate mythologies when we do not know history. We are doomed to believe things about the past or the origins of institutions in place today that are harmfully untrue.

An underlying assumption about policing in the U.S. is the idea that #BlueLivesMatter is a monolithic and static truth — the police have always been the police, and we need to support them. However, the history of policing in the U.S. is entirely more complicated than that. According to a Snopes article that helpfully synthesizes these facts, policing in the U.S. has morphed so much since its inception that we cannot hastily conclude that policing today is the same as it was in the 1800s (or even 1900s!).

Various social dynamics and events led to the creation and ongoing modification of a centralized police force in the U.S., including fugitive slaves, enforcement of immigration quotas of minorities, slave insurrections, and labor riots and protests.

…it is important to note that “the police” do not consist of a homogenous block of the American population, and while the early days of modern-day police forces are undeniable and under-covered facets of its history, the focus and perspective of policing is a complicated and fraught subject. It would be a mistake to assume that police in 2016 are the same as police in the 1870s, and to conclude that the profile of law enforcement in the United States — and around the world — has not changed throughout its existence. It would also be a mistake to assume that law enforcement cannot or will not be changed again in response to popular pressure, given that its focus has varied dramatically since its inception.

The dynamic nature of policing in the U.S. should lead us to believe that it is not set-in-stone institution, nor has it ever been. It is not “just the way things have always been.” It is not above accountability or the need to be transparent. Knowing this history prevents us from having an implicit faith in a myth of policing.

Developing a Critical Eye

Christians who understand in their gut the total-ness of sin and the common-ness of grace are required to engage the world with a critical eye. A critical eye is realistic about sin and grace. Nothing is as bad as it can possibly be, and nothing is as good as it can possibly be.

We cannot allow an assumption of the blamelessness of policing (or even 51% blamelessness) to prevent us from critically assessing the data out there about police brutality. Read the Department of Justice’s investigations of the Baltimore Police Department, the Chicago Police Department, Stanford University’s Open Policing Project on racial profiling, and Minnesota’s statewide racial profiling reports, to just scratch the surface.

We also cannot allow individualized ideas of sin overrule the systemic. As an example, White supremacy as an ideology and a system is not confined to White people. The history of White supremacy and racism in our country shows us that White supremacy uses tokenization and utilization of non-White people to further White supremacy. The weaponization of the “model minority myth” of Asian Americans in the U.S. is one of the many ways that White supremacy has attempted to perform a sleight of hand to make its oppressive history and practices magically disappear. The fact that a non-White police officer committed an act of police brutality and misconduct actually further proves that White supremacy is alive and well rather than disprove its existence. Remember: apples to apples, not apples to oranges.

Further, I personally do not think that it is wise to wholesale thank the police force for their service without exception and caveats. I especially do not recommend doing this in an ecclesiastical setting, but I’m also extremely hesitant about doing it elsewhere as well. It is one thing to thank a police officer for their faithful and self-sacrifice and an entirely different thing to thank the entire police force. Doing so may harmfully perpetuate a lack of accountability of policing and enforce a “do no wrong” mentality that silences victims of police brutality and misconduct, which are heavily represented by Black and Brown communities.

Applying Restorative Grace in Policing

With a critical eye that is shaped by both the total-ness of sin and the common-ness of grace, Christians individually and corporately can work toward applying restorative grace in policing in the U.S. As mentioned previously, the police force has changed many times since its inception, and there is a guarantee that it will continue to change even in our lifetime. Christians who understand God’s common grace and who are empowered by the Spirit to understand true righteousness and justice can advocate for changes in policing methodology that restores it to be for the good of all people. Christians who understand the healing nature of being “in the light” and not “in the darkness” can push for greater accountability and transparency of the police force, not less. Christians who have been shaped by an ethic of self-less love in resurrection power can teach the world about something beyond an eye-for-an-eye ethic. Christians who understand that unrighteousness is not colorblind can advocate for laws that are also not colorblind but rather are color-conscious to be able to defend the rights of the marginalized and oppressed.

Lastly, Christians who have been “raised with Christ” and are together with Him even now in the heavenly places cannot simply say, “it is what it is.” We cannot believe in a quietism that throws up our hands and twiddle our thumbs until Jesus returns. Jesus is alive and raised with resurrection power, and the future new heaven and new earth is already breaking in today. We, as His body, are His hands and feet in the world today. We embody and witness to true justice and righteousness. As Bonhoeffer once said, “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”