Part 3 of 4 – What the Blue Team is Missing (read Part 1 HERE)

While the Blue Team does a great job of recognizing the role that moral agency or free will plays in the violence in our society, works to protect the sanctity of human life from those who don’t value it, and appropriately recognizes the reality of the very limited resource window in which the ethics of human life are played out in a violent encounter, there are some angles that they are missing as well – both theological and practical.

Theologically, Blue Team Christians often fail to express God’s love and compassion for the perpetrators of violence. Their actions and attitudes often fail to communicate the Christian belief that even the worst of us are loved and treasured children of God. Feeling or expressing satisfaction or indifference when someone looses their life while attempting to commit an act of violence instead of remorse or sadness is not of God nor of the Way of Jesus. It does not embody the command to love our enemies or to love our neighbors as ourselves. It does not express the gratitude and humility of one who has come to understand and experience the grace of God. It would be better to take on the attitude of 16th century Martyr John Bradford who saw a group of prisoners being led to their execution and said, “There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford” (or in modern vernacular – “that could just as easily be me, but for God’s grace in my life”).

It is a tragedy when someone loses their life to an act of violence but it is also a tragedy when someone loses their life while attempting to commit an act of violence. It is a tragedy that so many image bearers of God are spending their lives locked away in prisons. Men and women living their lives in cages will never be the Dream of God for them, for us, or for our world.

Practically, Blue Team Christians tend to do a great job of recognizing the realities of the resource vacuum that occurs within the window of a violent encounter and the difficult choices that those situations demand, but they often overlook the significant opportunities to combat violence in our society outside of that window. While an act of violence is a moral choice, our choices are not made in a vacuum. We are all influenced by our family, our friends, our social, and cultural groups, and the things we give our attention to. These influences do not dictate our moral choices but they do influence them. Advocating for prison reform that returns more rehabilitated fathers to their families and communities, mentoring at-risk teenagers, supporting overwhelmed teachers in underperforming schools, helping struggling students succeed in school, and working with community leaders to improve paths out of poverty may not prepare you to survive in the window of a violent encounter but these things will make it less likely that you or someone else will find yourself in one.

Interestingly, it is also impossible be a follower of Jesus and not engage the systemic contributors to violence while there is time and opportunity to do so. After all it was Jesus who commanded his followers to look out for the hungry, the poor, the sick, those in prison and the scriptures that Jesus lived out that advocates for the cause of the marginalized and the fatherless.

Our communities, our society, and our world would be a very different place if Blue Team Christians and Yellow Team Christians lived more faithfully to the Way of Jesus.

[Stay tuned or subscribe by email at the top or bottom of the bottom of the page to see Part 4 – Mixing Yellow & Blue]