Christians and the Breonna Taylor Tragedy: Do We Care What Words Mean?

 

Some Christian personalities have continued to use the word murder in reference to the Breonna Taylor killing.  Tragic, yes.  Sad, yes.  Painful, yes. Criminal, perhaps.  However, it doesn’t rise to murder.  Consequently, Christians who are claiming it’s murder may want to reframe their thinking and revisit their wording.

The Kentucky murder statute requires that a person must form an intent to cause the death of another person before the state can convict that person of murder.  KRS 507.020.  For an act to be intentional it requires a person have a “conscious objective” to cause the particular result or engage in the particular conduct.  KRS 501.020.  This is the law in Kentucky.

Applying the actual law to the Breonna Taylor case, none of the police officers involved had a “conscious objective” to kill either Breonna Taylor or her boyfriend.  Their objective, manifestly, was to protect themselves.  Arguments about the validity of the warrant, or whether the officers should have fired any shots or as many shots, or that the other officers who got the warrant lied to get it, or that Breonna Taylor didn’t have a gun, or even the heinousness of the outcome don’t have any bearing on the intent of the officers involved.  There has to be evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer whose shot killed her had a conscious objective to kill either the boyfriend or her at some time before the first shot was fired at the officers. In other words, the circumstances, however difficult and even unjust are not how we determine whether a murder occurred. The key feature of a murder is that the killer meant to kill and killed regardless of circumstance.  The shooting in this case was incidental to the reasons the police were there, not the reason they were there.

Perhaps an analogy will help here.  Suppose an ex-boyfriend showed up instead of the police.  The ex-boyfriend isn’t mad at the new boyfriend and is not there to shoot either Breonna or the new boyfriend. He has a gun with him. He just wants to talk, or get back some item that belongs to him, or has some other reason for being there that doesn’t involve intending to kill anyone.  He bangs on the door.  No one answers.  As he bangs on the door a second time it opens and he pushes it only to see new boyfriend standing in the hallway with a gun pointed at him.  A shot is fired and old boyfriend starts shooting and he hits Breonna and kills her.

Is anyone going to say he “murdered” Breonna?  No.  Why not? Because he did not have the conscious objective to kill anyone. He was reacting to circumstances.  One might argue he overreacted or that he reacted negligently. No reasonable person, however, would say he had any objective other than his original reason to be there. The shooting is incidental to his purposes.

Christians who are using the word murder are not merely being sloppy.  This incident was absolutely not a murder. No matter how problematic you believe the circumstances, no matter how heinous you believe the result to be, calling this murder is wrong. Since it is wrong to claim it was murder, you should immediately stop using that word, as the connotation is clear: the police intended to kill her. They did not.

I have not seen one Christian personality who has used the word murder suggest they meant it in some pejorative sense. I have not seen one suggest that they’re saying murder because of the heinousness of the situation. Maybe that’s what they really intend, but I’ve not seen it.  Even if that’s what they mean, we cannot as Christians simply bandy about words incorrectly.  After all, supposedly we believe the Bible’s words are true. We think they mean something specific.  We also assign life altering significance to the words of Scripture.  Why should a watching world care what we say about the Bible or believe what we claim it means when we show ourselves willing to cast aside meaning to suit our own angst or our own agenda?  Does that then mean Christians who are calling this murder are willing to re-invent the words of the Bible to suit their own purposes?  Why should I believe you when you claim otherwise if you aren’t willing to be honest regarding this matter? 

The tragedy of this matter shouldn’t result in dishonesty for the sake of some supposed greater good.  That’s called the ends justifies the means. There is nothing Christian about such an attitude.

Additionally, since it is not murder, it violates the 9^th commandment to keep saying it is.  Doing so is bearing false witness against the police officers.  If you are a Christian referring to Breonna Taylor’s death as murder you should stop right now and you should repent.  You are wrong in what you are doing.

Note, too, the definition of murder asks nothing about how anyone feels about the event.  The law must brutally ignore feelings because too often feelings lead us astray. A prosecutor doesn’t get to say to a jury you should feel so badly for Breonna Taylor that you find the police officer guilty of murder.  We don’t allow this because justice demands reasoned treatment under the law, not vengeance.  Acting on feelings leads to vengeance, not justice.

This leads to the second biblical problem with calling this event a murder.  Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. Romans 12:19 (referring to Leviticus 19:18).  Christians ought not to stir up wrathful and vengeful feelings among others.  Calling Breonna Taylor’s death a murder serves no other purpose, as it is not properly or rightly describing what happened to her. 

The Breonna Taylor situation is sad, tragic, unfortunate, perhaps criminal but it is not murder.  Using this word helps nothing.  Christians, of all people, should be ready to use words carefully and appropriately in order to communicate truth.  If we can’t be counted on to do this, then no one should listen to us.

The Unbearable Offensiveness of Names and How to Fix It - A Modest Proposal

Since names have become offensive, I have a simple solution.

First, we have to start with the states and their smaller units, such as counties and cities and towns and boroughs and so forth.  Each state will be named State One, State Two, State Three and so on based on when the state was admitted into the country.  Smaller units in each state will also be numbered in whatever order seems appropriate to the state by population or by any other method.  City one, city two, and so forth.  For instance, you might have in the state formerly known as Delaware, something like this: State One, City Three.   Streets will, of course, require renaming as well.  I suppose names like Main Street and similar such banalities can stay, but that will require very close observation.  Perhaps streets named after trees would be okay.  But let’s not go crazy here.  The idea is to rid ourselves of anything that could be considered offensive.

Second, we’ll have to get rid of all names for people.  I mean we can’t have people naming their children grossly offensive names like Jacob and Rebecca (both biblical) or other equally offensive names.  So we will call them by unit designations such as Unit A, Unit B and so forth, adding numbers and letters and numerals to distinguish.  So someone with the last name Smith would have UnitS1 as their last name. Smith is the most common last name starting with S, which is why it gets the S1 designation.  UnitJ1 would be Johnson.  This is sooo easy.  Parents would give children first and middle letters with appropriate numbers to distinguish them.  A standard name might be A1B1S1.  Of course, just like now, we can distinguish the various A1B1S1’s by birthday and social security number.

Third, this will solve the sports name dilemma.  For instance, the New York Giants and New York Jets would now be State Three (New Jersey), City 3 (I picked 3 arbitrarily) Footballers 1 and State Three, City 3 Footballers 2.  (The Jets will be 2, of course, given their overall lack of performance compared to the Giants).  The term Footballers functionally describes what they do.  Basketball teams would be called Basketballers, baseball teams would be called baseballers and so forth.

This idea can go on and on.  State governments could sell rights to be auto mechanic one or gas station one or fast food restaurant one.  I know there will be some inevitable kinks in this system, but I think we can work them out.  Let’s put some of that good ol’ Group of 50 States ingenuity to work here.

You see how fun this is and how exceedingly non-oppressive and non-offensive all this is, right?  Why didn’t we do this years ago?  Look at all the problems we’d solve.  Everyone would immediately be so much happier and so much more well behaved, thoughtful, generous, decent, kind and all other adjectives that describe the ultimately good person.  We could, of course, then immediately defund the police since all crime would stop.  We could get rid of psychiatrists and psychologists since everyone would automatically stop having any sort of mental ailments.  School would take so much less time since who cares about history in light of the new and improved us.  Plus, we’d need many fewer words so English classes could be cut down.  I better stop now before I think of any more of the sensational and beautiful benefits this great new system will generate.

Let’s all join in and sing our new Group of 50 States song which also contains our new national bird: Fly, Robin, Fly (because the eagle is a symbol of the Nazis, even though it was the American bird and American symbol LONG before the Nazis were a germ of an idea in anyone’s head).

I can’t wait.