Hosea 10:12-13 — Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you. Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men.

I’ve said before that there are pieces I don’t really want to write. Today’s is one I would never want to have to write, but I have to write about the events in Ferguson Missouri. I have to write about sin, a sinful background, and a hope for redemption.

Let’s start with the immediate events. The civil disobedience, culminating in the shooting of two police officers last night, is sinful. It is lawlessness, not protest. The Civil Rights leaders who are so rightly celebrated in America would surely have rejected it:

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation for such method is love. — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It is not enough, however, to simply dismiss the events in Ferguson as sinful rioting. We cannot deny the context. America has a sinful history of oppressing African Americans. Sadly, it would be naive to say that it’s all in the past. Another painful current news story is the expulsion of a fraternity from Oklahoma University because of overtly racist behavior. Even our own Southern Baptist Convention did not formally repent until 1995, when it said (in part):

Be it further RESOLVED, That we apologize to all African-Americans for condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime; and we genuinely repent of racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously (Psalm 19:13) or unconsciously (Leviticus 4:27); and

Be it further RESOLVED, That we ask forgiveness from our African-American brothers and sisters, acknowledging that our own healing is at stake; (full text at http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/899/resolution-on-racial-reconciliation-on-the-150th-anniversary-of-the-southern-baptist-convention)

There is another disturbing element to these tragic circumstances. The media reporting and political commentary — from all sides — has been partisan and dishonest. 

The only good news in all of this is that there is a redeemer. Paul writes of sowing and reaping, but it seemed to me that Hosea’s earlier version had more to say today. First, “Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity.” That cannot be denied. Second, “Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till He come and rain righteousness upon you.”

There is no quick fix to the ills of Ferguson, nor to the underlying context. The confession and repentance of the Southern Baptist Convention perhaps provides a model for a starting point.

Let Dr. King speak again:

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Amen. That is the beacon of light on these sad, dark, days.