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Recent news, as so often is the case, has brought images and descriptions of young black men shot by police officers. The narrative is sickeningly familiar: a young person dies; protests take place; authorities promise a full and fair investigation and, if warranted, consequences for the officers involved; journalists and community leaders remind us of the long series of these deaths; voices call for mutual respect and genuine collaboration between minority communities and law enforcement agencies, and insist on reform of the justice system. 

Hardly anything changes.

It's been the hum and buzz of the last few days, a welcome change of focus from the toxicity of our culture.

Pokemon GO, it's called, a bit of augmented reality silliness that builds upon the warm simplicity of the Pokemon universe.  Pokemon games, both electronic and card based, have always involved wandering around a virtual world in search of Pocket Monsters to find, catch, and collect. 

It's a game that has succeeded by scratching that primal itch to both hunt and gather.

A couple of days ago I tried to make a point about #AllLivesMatter drawing on the biblical prophets. This week, a Facebook friend made a similar point in relation to Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke’s Gospel.

Eric Adams describes his experience as an African American citizen and father as well as a police officer in blue uniform in this guest column; what can only be a painful intersection every day has become searing this week.

I live in a neighborhood where most of my neighbors have much darker skin than I do. I wish more of my city were like my street. Demographic maps based on census data show that my city’s neighborhoods, like most, tend not to be diverse. Even if it were not my friends and neighbors that we are talking about when unarmed black men are killed by police, I would not be able to stay silent. But I suspect a big issue is precisely that not only the “all lives matter” crowd, but even people like me saying “black lives matter,” are often making theoretical statements about other people, living in other neighborhoods.

And so I felt the need to say something more personal, to my friends, neighbors, and colleagues.

For the second time this week we have heard of another police shooting of an African American. Tuesday saw the killing of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Lousiana, and Wednesday night Philando Castile in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights, Minnesota. While all of these shootings have bothered me, the Falcon Heights shooting hit closer to home, and not just because it was only a few miles from me.

What makes this one more real to me is that Mr. Castile could have been me.

I was warned. Me and a few hundred others who had gathered for a funeral. Me and a few hundred others who sat, silently, grimly, in a cavernous and spare sanctuary while a stern man in a black suit stood in an elevated pulpit and admonished us with grave fingers wagging. I was warned that death was coming for me and unless I renounced the ways of the devil and repented of my worldly pride and attachments, that my fate would be a fiery and tortuous one. I was told that there was nothing good in me and that I could never stand before the righteous judge of the earth. I was told that God has his elect and we must never question God’s ways.

And for a moment—just a tiny moment—it was exhilarating.

Often when we talk about what makes us human, we talk about how we are different from other animals. We mention upright posture, language, culture, self-transcendence, and so on. Our concern seems to be articulating and establishing our distance from animals. Theologically speaking, what makes us human, what makes us distinct, is our responsibility for creation as bearers of God’s image and not whatever way we might be different than other animals.

It is interesting that when God uses images and metaphors to describe God’s own self, God and the biblical writers don’t have any problem comparing God to various animals.

After our twin daughters died, mothers from all over wrote to me. They had lost babies before birth, after birth, in childhood, and beyond. They wrote to me with love and compassion, empathy’s impulse to reach out in shared suffering, even to a stranger.

And to a person, they all said the same thing:

God was with me so powerfully in the moments and days surrounding my child’s death.

Later, my experience of God became the wilderness.

If this happens for you, I understand. I am here.