SOMETHING IS BROKEN IN AMERICA, horribly broken… The tragic case involving Columbia, SC store owner Rick Chow ending the life of 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton has come to a conclusion: an acquittal for the store owner. While pundits, experts, and analysts contend over the merits of the case and provide their views on whether justice was served, Christians should be looking even deeper. For us, we must recognize the failure of the social fabric that made this tragedy possible. Mr. Chow may have been acquitted, but our society remains indicted.
When you examine the facts of this case, you see an articulate argument revealing the decay of our modern culture. A 14-year-old boy walking around with a loaded pistol, a store owner so guarded that an armed foot chase happens over the suspicion of stolen water bottles, and a nation ready to apply all sorts of twisted reasoning to every action of authorities and individuals—this is not a localized South Carolina news story; this is the chaos of fallen humanity playing out before our eyes.
When the moral law as foundational to our society is rejected, when the collapse of the family structure proliferates a nation, and when shared values are forgotten, this is the result. Basic civic trust disappears, criminality rises, and communities suffer. We now find ourselves in the reality of a secular, post-Christian culture, where love for neighbor has been replaced by mutual suspicion and our belief in the sanctity of life is daily stained by the blood of people made in the image of God.
Some are disappointed in the verdict, while others rejoice, but we should all recognize that a court can offer a verdict, but it can supply no cure. Governmental authorities can resist evil, but they cannot heal brokenness; only the Church has that answer. Thus, we must take care to not become part of the noise in moments like this.
We should resist accepting violence and suspicion as normative. We should grieve the loss of life made in the image of God. We should lament the circumstances that make such events increasingly likely. We should boldly proclaim the Gospel and never surrender the reality that there is only one answer to what ails our nation: Jesus. Our social fabric has been rent through years of neglect and abuse, but there is hope.
A return to the absolutes of God’s truth, a moral order growing out of that truth, and the transforming power of the Gospel can still change a nation. Let us never stop believing, praying, and proclaiming that reality.
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