This will be a little bit different than the normal blog post I put out there. I’ve struggled with this for over a week – one of the reasons there was no post last week…
Living in the Dallas area, this past week and a half has been a sobering reminder of the realities of the world we now live in. I have friends who are, or have been, policemen in Dallas and the surrounding communities as well as Baton Rouge. While I did not personally know the casualties of these senseless acts, it still hurts when our communities are diminished by the loss of these brave individuals.
A number of years ago, while finishing my degree at Baylor, I had a friend who was several years older than I was at the time. Roger was a sergeant with the Waco Police Department. He was tall – well over 6-feet – with a great sense of humor and in really good physical condition. He had a nice wife and family. He answered a call one day to a disturbance at the bus station and happened to be the first to arrive on the scene. He was dead minutes later. What he didn’t know, was that man had a hidden butcher knife. Roger died saving a taxi driver’s life and detaining his own killer by holding him while being repeatedly stabbed until other police arrived. Typical of the selflessness of every policeman I have ever known – and probably also of those I have, unfortunately, met under less than ideal circumstances – once as a robbery victim and…let’s just say, more than once, receiving slips of paper critiquing my driving…
Let’s look at a couple of things. First, Roger was not killed by a gun. He was killed by a kitchen utensil, which shows that while guns can be effective, it is not the gun alone that kills. In fact, Roger’s killer was shot multiple times by the officers who came up on the scene – he survived.
The underlying cause of these recent police murders are not the weapons nor types of weapons. (Statistically, more people are beaten to death each year in this country than are murdered with a rifle.) In these recent incidents, it is the anarchist rhetoric of some individuals and organizations calling for retribution. While the 1st Amendment is critical and must not be limited under normal circumstances, there are limitations that we have accepted – such as the clichéd standby of not yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater…
Our language must always be measured. It must not be hateful. It must not be seditious. But, it must be allowed to be persuasive. And, contrary to the beliefs of some, it must also be allowed to offend. Remember, communication is bi-directional. It does not take place when something is said. It only occurs when what is said is also received. It is up to the sender to temper their words and measure the impact of their statements for good or ill. But it is also up to the receiver to filter that message and determine whether it is worthy of absorption or just background noise. Unfortunately, a few individuals did not filter the incoming messages and absorbed the toxins spewed in hateful, ill-advised speech.
It is our individual, personal responsibility to temper our speech. It is also our personal responsibility to filter what we receive, to not absorb messages of hate, and to not be “thin-skinned” when we hear something that offends us. In the vast majority of instances, it was not intended to be offensive, but if it was, filter it out as background noise…
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