(Note: my initial reaction to what happened yesterday I wrote here. However, I wanted to give a full treatment to what happened yesterday, as I got some pushback that I was not addressing the specifics of what happened enough. I decided to merge my thoughts with a post I was already working on regarding how we can come back as a nation from COVID. Sorry if the end product is clunky, but I wanted to get these thoughts out)
My friend Alex recently posed the question: how do you think we as a society will come together after COVID? He wondered aloud that given the vast gulf between those who respond to the pandemic with a laissez-faire attitude and those who respond to the pandemic with a take no risks attitude, it would be possible to return the same relationships as before. After all, not taking COVID serious is not merely a personal choice; it has profoundly affected those on society’s margins.
I think that question takes on even more meaning today. We just witnessed an unprecedented act of political violence against our political institutions. Choosing to participate in what we just saw was not merely a fun stunt but a harmful action for American Democracy. But how are we supposed to do that when we are so divided? Are we to expect people to move on after such anti-social behavior has been exhibited by so many? Yet given how low our social trust is and how bitterly divided we are as a country, how does any effort at responding to what can we come together while still taking seriously the idea that decisions made during this time have real consequences and impacts on people’s lives?
On the one hand, we need to acknowledge the profound importance of justice. All relationships, societies, and world order depending on there being some sense of justice for those wronged, and necessarily, some punishment for those who do wrong. You cannot let bad actors go unpunished, or people will lose all trust that their interests will be upheld when on the line. They will lose all sense of safety within society. In Christian social thought, there is an ongoing belief that all breakdowns in social functioning (economic, political, legal) ultimately hurt the poor, and this is no different. COVID clearly has shown this: the old and infirm, the precariously employed, and working-class service workers and caregivers have suffered much, while many others are almost totally insulated from the impacts of COVID.
Likewise, while it is harder to see the “harm” done by attacks on abstract institutions, the breakdown of institutions of all kinds indeed leads to impacts on the most marginalized in society. The Marginalized are the most dependent on political rules and norms to protect their right, on economic institutions to create broad-based prosperity, legal institutions to uphold justice. As we move forward, there has to be a sense of the need for some form of justice to be done to restore our nation to normalcy. We cannot only move on without any attempt to reckon with how we got into the mess we currently find ourselves in.
On the other hand, we also need to acknowledge the proud imperative to grace. Phillip Yancey’s writing on the nature of grace has always struck a chord with me, as well as the absolute toxicity of the absence of grace:
Ungrace does its work quietly and lethally, like a poisonous, undetectable gas. A father dies unforgiven. A mother who once carried a child in her own body does not speak to that child for half its life. The toxin steals on, from generation to generation
There is no way to read the American social landscape right now and not see some of the utterly graceless scenes you will ever see. Our bitter division has created a “take no prisoners” “spare no past misdeeds” approach to every conflict we have. We profoundly distrust each other, and we want our enemies punished dearly. I fear that there is no metering out of justice in this kind of environment that ends fairly.
Christian theological Miroslav Volf once noted that anger takes the form of resentment in the hands of the weak. In the hands of the powerful, a desire for justice that is purely animated by anger takes the form of vengeance. And once someone is out of power, We can see this in our politics, as we see-saw between parties. No different than the tribal conflict of our recent past, whatever party comes into power has a series of scores to settle. Whatever party is out of power builds a list of resentments to act on once you grab that power. Volf witnessed how this played out in his native Balkans in the 1990s, and his theology is deeply tuned into the harm that can be done when this kind of anger builds over time. What becomes clear is that grace becomes our only way out of this kind of cycle: the radical idea that one we would extend undeserved forgiveness and mercy upon those who we have every reason to resent and take vengeance upon
So given this profound moment, how do we hold these two tensions together as a society? I don’t know. I really wish I did. But as a Christian, I think this is the time to look to Jesus as our model: Jesus was not some lamb-hugging, child head patting sentimentalists. He was someone who cared passionately about justice: condemning those who exploit the weak, the poor, the social outcast. He spent a significant part of his ministry, trying to get powerful people to recognize how their sin made them complicit in injustice.
But it is also true that while Jesus spoke many hard truths, he also consistently did so to the people that were part of his tribe. The word “Pharisee” has taken on a negative connotation in our culture, partially because of the harshness of the words Jesus often used against them. But my understanding is that part of the reason Jesus spoke so harshly to them was because of all the various “ideological tribes” within 1st century Judea; they were the people who actually were ideologically closest to Jesus. While Jesus surely could have spent his time critiquing outsiders in his society, almost all of his encounters involve him extending them grace. We could all learn a lot from this philosophy.
To look at this tension of grace and justice through the lens of a different issue, In the past year, I have spent a significant amount of time trying to understand better the criminal justice system in the United States and the needed reforms that we can and should undertake. For context: The United States has the highest prison population globally, both in absolute terms (higher than authoritarian China) and per capita (higher than gang-ruled El Salvador). Much effort has gone into advocacy in recent years, which has turned attention to what can be done to change this. One thing that was really reinforced by John Pfaff’s book Locked In is how its popular advocates often misrepresent the narrative around criminal justice reform. The “popular” version of criminal justice reform is advanced often as follows:
That our criminal justice system has very disparate treatment based on the race and class of the defendant, especially when you consider the unequal economic prospect in our country based on race and class, which often leads young men to criminal activity
That part of that disproportionate impact can be traced to our criminal justice system’s harsh sentencing of non-violent (especially drug) crime compared to other nations.
Given those propositions, many advocates frame criminal justice reform as a matter purely of injustice. If we can make the justice system “more just” by reforming our process (IE by ensuring public defense) and by stopping our harsh treatment of non-violent crime (IE ending the “war on drugs”), we will fix the problem of criminal justice. But while this is a good first step, it alone will not fix the criminal justice system. When you look at the Prison Policy Institute data, you start to realize that the overwhelming number of people in our prisons (about 80%) are there for non-drug crime. Even if you exclude property crime, you see that close to 1 million people are in prison for a violent or sexual crime.
And while it is certainly true that many convicted of violent crime are there because of unfair processes (like not having access to full legal counsel), many are actually guilty of the violent crime they were convicted of. Even if you assume that a full ⅓ of this population in jail or prison are “innocent,” you are still looking at over 600,000 people in the system for a violent or sexual crime they committed, a number which is still staggering when compared to our peer nations. Making the Criminal Justice system “more Just” is not enough to “fix it,” in my view.
What we need is a criminal justice system that is both more just and more gracious. If you look at statistics regarding reoffending rates, most people are surprised to find out that violent and sexual offenses are the least likely to be reoffended. We intuitively believe that most who are in prison for violent or sexual offenses are irredeemable, and to be fair, I would not dispute that many should be in jail for the rest of their life. However, the data tells the story of many people who made a terrible mistake in their youth and truly redeemed if given a chance. Christians like myself should be the first to acknowledge this reality; it is, after all, core to our belief system. This has been one reason why the Evangelical organization Prison Fellowship has long advocated for more grace in the criminal justice process because its founder Chuck Colson was a criminal who profoundly experienced life-changing grace. I firmly believe that a good society is one where the criminal justice system is both “just” and “gracious,” and this tension must inform our thinking.
To lay my cards on the table: those who know me know I have been very risk-averse concerning COVID. I have been profoundly upset to see many people refuse to lay down their personal interests and sacrifice for the common good, especially when I see so much suffering in my city. Likewise, I have been very critical of President Trump since before he was elected and have been often frustrated by those who have consistently defended him and turned a blind eye to his many faults. Recent events, both in the explosion of COVID in my city and what happened to the capitol today, have made me angry. Please do not take my exhortations to lay down toxic political conflict make you think that I am not angry. I believe people who harm others, especially those with power, need to be held to account. I was personally happy to see the Democrats beat the GOP in Georgia on Tuesday, not because I am a partisan who thinks that Democratic control will be utopia, but because Donald Trump (and his GOP supporters) had with their conduct shown such levels of contempt for those who like myself are strong believers in political moderation and process, that losing was a form of “just desserts.”
At the same time, I think it is profoundly important to start from a position of epistemic humility regarding politics. My views on politics (like all peoples) are heavily determined by where I sit in the world, my life experience, who my friends are, where I went to school, etc. If I sat in someone else’s shoes, I might see things differently. Furthermore, I have said and done many things in the name of politics or political beliefs that I now regret. I have been lucky not to have made those mistakes in full public view, and who am I to fail to extend that grace to others who are making mistakes within the political arena? Both sides have and are exhibiting outright glee with the chance to prosecute their political opponents. I find the increasing tendency and desire never to forgive our political opponents' perceived misdeeds for being one of our political culture's ugliest parts. Not only does it lack empathy, but it is also irrational: if we believe our opponents are “beyond redemption” and will always be outcasts, what incentive do people have to repent and change? Of course, there need to be consequences for misdeeds, but without grace, the very notion of reconciliation, and living together becomes impossible.
To take the point about epistemic humility further, grace also allows us to overcome our own hypocrisy. There is a tendency on the left and right to become very “situation” in your political ethics, depending on who the agent in question is. When there was political unrest over the summer, there was an outspoken norm on the left (and in media that is largely liberal in its political orientation) NOT to call the violence done in the name of social justice “rioting” or to dismissed that anyone was hurt by it. I thought this was bad sentiment simply for the fact that this view of facts on the ground was really not true, that many small business people lost everything when their stores were burned, many of which were businesses in working-class communities of color with entrepreneurs who had overcome numerous barriers to get their business off the ground. But it should strike folks as hypocritical that those who insistent on not calling out what happened over the summer are now turning around, encouraging the authorities to “throw the book” at the insurrectionists from yesterday, and being very explicit about saying "these people are terrorists, not protestors."
Now to be clear, that is not me saying there is a pure moral equivalency in my mind: I personally believe that there is a lot more legitimacy to the grievance that communities of color have against the criminal justice system than there is the legitimacy that the 2020 election was stolen. I can point to all kinds of reporting and data that leads me to think that. I also happen to think that leading an assault on an occupied congress is a much bigger threat to our political system than burning an empty police station. I also think it is worth pointing out the hypocrites on the right, most prominently President trump, who are quick to chant “law and order” when African-Americans are protesting in the streets but encourage and fan the flames of the right-wing, pro-Trump mob that we saw yesterday. It is notable that over the summer, while many on the left hemmed and hawed, Joe Biden forcefully and clearly denounced political violence on several occasions. And now, while many on the Right are forcefully and clearly denouncing political violence, President Trump is nowhere to be found. I believe there is a real asymmetry there that belies a “both sides” approach.
But the fact is that they are both acts of political violence at the end of the day. And part of living in a democracy is that we agree to subject our personal, moral judgments about which issues are legitimate to our nation’s systems of rules and process. We have elections: those elections determine who our political leaders are. You can and should work as hard as you can to get your preferred candidate in office. Once elected, you can try to petition and persuade those political leaders to prioritize issues or change their minds once they are in office. You can even peacefully protest and demonstrate on the street as a show of how you can mobilize political power. But once you start injecting political violence into the system, it all falls apart because the other side then feels justified using political violence as a tool for their cause. In fact, this was the whole crux of the historical argument for liberal democracy as a system: that democracy is a substitute for war and violence to resolve conflicts in society. Has it been perfect or fair in American history? Absolutely not. But before we reject the system out of hand, it is worth critically examining the violent revolutions over the past 200 years and looking at how many of them actually led to better alternatives to our current system, as opposed to opening the door back up for war and violence.
This is what brings us back to the delicate balance of grace and justice: without both, we have no future as a country. While I have no expectations that we will get it right, either in the fallout from our current OR future crisis, I do believe it is the north star we should all be aiming for.