Finding Moral Clarity and Courage in the Face of State Sanctioned Violence

Dear ones, know that I am with you in your grief and your anger in these heavy days. The violent death of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of ICE officers in Minneapolis on Wednesday is a tragedy that leaves many of us at a loss for words. The administration’s false narrative painting Good as a “domestic terrorist” adds an additional Orwellian layer of fear. There is little I can say to assuage the pain so many of us are feeling as we process these events, but I can assure you that you are not alone as you rage and lament. Giving our feelings of grief and anger the time and space they deserve will help ensure our response to this injustice is borne out of a fierce and authentic love.

In my own rage and lament, I have found myself using the word “God” with a capital G more than anytime in recent memory. I have found myself uttering “My God,” praying simply, “God help us” and describing the events as “ungodly.” Most of you know that I ascribe to a theology that is expansive and playful, holding my understanding of God lightly. It is when I am most angry over injustice that I become reflexively theistic. The word is still imprecise, but in using it I see myself reaching for the power it carries in our society—the way it represents humans' feeble attempts to name that which is both utterly transcendent and palpably immanent. I use it when something feels so utterly misaligned with the goodness I believe rests at the heart of the universe, that it simply does not feel like enough to say, “this goes against my values.”

I find myself reaching for the moral weight of the word to counter doubt, distraction, and gaslighting—to counter the administration’s attempts to convince me I don’t know the difference between good and evil when I see it. I want language that feels eternal, transcending shifting civic norms and reversible Supreme Court decisions. I want language with a moral weight that doesn’t require me to repeatedly watch and analyze a zoomed in, slow motion video of US agents shooting a human being at point blank range, before I decide whether or not that killing is immoral.

So right now, I am reaching for “God” language. I might not forever. And I don’t expect you to. But I do want us to figure out how to sit with the full spiritual weight of what we’re witnessing. I want us to be able to find our way through the morass of pundits and commentators and facebook posts to reach the very ground of our being—the wellspring of our ethical commitments—and move forward from that place.

Because this is a moment that demands moral clarity.

I say that in part, because I see the attempts to shift the moral goal posts and obscure the ethical issues at hand. I see the comments on the videos and news stories online saying, “This wouldn’t have happened if she complied with orders,” without any regard for the shock of fear and confusion when masked men are shouting conflicting orders with mere seconds to respond. These comments are also without any analysis of the virtues of those orders to begin with. They reject, on their face, any notion that we live in a society where non-compliance may be a moral imperative. To participate in this debate normalizes and condones ICE’s presence in the neighborhood to begin with. Rather than discussing the morality of ICE kidnapping our immigrant neighbors, we cede that ground to debate the morality of ICE killing those who are trying to prevent them from kidnapping our neighbors. When we start arguing about whether or not she “complied,” we have accepted the notion that the price for non-compliance with an unjust system is death. Legal or not, that’s simply not a moral system I can accept.

In the days and weeks ahead, there will be opportunities for us to discuss as a community how our faith calls us to show up in this moment. I want to hear from you about how you want to get involved in the ongoing work to defend our immigrant neighbors, push back against fascist ideology, and fight for the values of love and justice we hold dear. But most of all, I want that work to come from a place of authentic spiritual grounding and deeply held ethical commitments. The stakes are too high for anything less.

So rage and lament. Feel your grief and acknowledge your fear. Mourn and honor the life of Renee Good. Do it all in the name of whatever it is you call sacred. And then offer gratitude for this community where, together, we can find the moral clarity and collective courage we need to ground us in this moment.

I leave you with these words about order, disorder, and faithful noncompliance, written in 1968 by Daniel Berrigan on behalf of the nine people arrested for burning draft files in Catonsville, MD during the Vietnam War. They always bring me strength and courage in times such as these. You can read the full statement here.

“All of us who act against the law, turn to the poor of the world, to the Vietnamese, to the victims, to the soldiers who kill and die, for the wrong reasons, for no reason at all, because they were so ordered—by the authorities of that public order which is in effect a massive institutionalized disorder. We say: killing is disorder, life and gentleness and community and unselfishness is the only order we recognize. For the sake of that order, we risk our liberty, our good name.”

In solidarity and love,
Rev. Danielle