KNOWING, SAYING, AND DOING

 

©Wendell Griffen, 2022

June 10, 2022

The first verse of the second chapter of Micah in the Hebrew (Old) Testament reads: Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power. 

Professor, preacher, and activist Allan Boesak provided a clear description of the abusive power machinations exposed by Micah in the following excerpt from his 2015 book, Kairos, Crisis, and Global Apartheid: The Challenge to Prophetic Resistance:[1] 

Micah teaches us that prophetic judgment is not emotional ranting and raving. He is meticulous as he lists the evil that those who oppress the poor “love.” They “devise wickedness and evil deeds in their beds,” that is they think of nothing else all night long, and when morning dawns, “they perform it.”  This should give us pause. First, Micah offers sober insight into the human psyche:  unlike animals reacting on instincts for self-preservation and survival, humans contemplate the evil they wreak upon others. They plan exploitation and oppression; they calculate the profits and benefits …They design the language of justification, obfuscation, and trivialization…There is nothing spontaneous about it. Then Micah adds, with amazing insight into the workings of power, ancient and modern, “because it is in their power” (2:1). This is what lies at the core of their evildoing:  raw, abusive power. There is no fuzziness, naivete, no ambiguity about this:  it is pure, naked, abusive power. [Kairos, p. 125]

There are situations and circumstances that demand unflinching candor so people will know what is happening to them, why it is happening, and what consequences will follow because of it. When we are ill, we need the truth about our medical conditions. When students are in academic trouble, they need the truth about their situation. When work is not done properly, workers need honest evaluation.

We need “straight talk” to realize our situation. We need “straight talk” so we can correct our mistakes. We need “straight talk” to know the adverse results that will follow unless we change course – repent, in other words – and behave differently.

George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, in plain sight of onlookers, by a man who was later fired from the Minneapolis Police Department and with the assistance of three other police officers. Two years later, the nation has not enacted the George Floyd Policing Act.

Representative John Lewis of Georgia championed voting rights legislation until his dying day. Almost two years after he died on July 17, 2020, the nation has not enacted the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Former President Donald Trump was elected in 2016 thanks to overwhelming support from white voters who self-identified as Christians. Four years later, even more white voters who identified as Christians supported Trump’s unsuccessful bid for re-election despite that he was impeached twice, lied about the dangers of the worse viral threat to the US population in over a century, and schemed to prevent Joseph Biden, the candidate who defeated him in 2020, from entering office.

I mention these things to remind readers what John Adams, the second President of the United States, famously said.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

Trump’s pathological, racist, and incompetent leadership was no accident. It happened because people schemed to produce it.

Attacks on voting rights are not occurring by accident. Laws to suppress voting and intimidate voters have been drafted and enacted because people schemed to create and pass them.

Abusive and homicidal actions by law enforcement officers do not happen routinely in the United States by accident. They happen and are not prevented and corrected because people schemed to shield abusive and homicidal law enforcement officers and their employers from liability for what would otherwise be condemned as domestic terrorism, torture, and murder.

Allan Boesak is right. “There is no fuzziness, naivete, no ambiguity about this: it is pure, naked, abusive power.”

However, I am not optimistic that the American public has the moral courage and devotion to democracy to do anything more than applaud the brave souls who fight such power or shrug about it. Instead, what Micah observed about the society he lived in is true of the United States today. There is no appetite for truth, no willingness to denounce fascism, white supremacy, patriarchy, misogyny, bigotry, and religious nationalism. There appears to be no insight for the grave depth to which our society has fallen.

This is an evil time.

It is our duty to say so.

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[1] Allan Aubrey Boesak, Kairos, Crisis, and Global Apartheid:  The Challenge to Prophetic Resistance, New York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.