Unarmed Americans Being Shot By the Police, and What God Has Said About All That and Then Some

I Wonder What Would God Say About

All These Police Killings In the US? (Jeremiah 7: 1–11)

By Minister Paul J. Bern

The United States of America is evidently coming apart at the seams. That’s an observation of current events in America, not just my opinion. Police shootings of unarmed Black men and youths — and some white folks too — are epidemic and increasingly notorious. Lately I have been seeing and learning, much to my own horror, that civilians are taking matters into their own hands by assassinating police officers while they are on duty. We’ve had at least two such incidents this year so far — one where a cop was shot execution style while fueling up his patrol car, and the other where an officer was dragged for several miles and was later pronounced ‘DOA’ at the hospital. So does this mean we have descended into a deadly game of tit-for-tat on American streets? Does a state of civil war now exist between African-Americans and law enforcement?

Of course, there are always two sides to every story. In several of the shootings of unarmed Black men, police officers have just recently been charged with murder, as you know. Yet by the same token…