What are God’s people called to do in the face of evil?
When I see stories in the news such as the charges of rape at Cornell University, and hear the reactions to them, I am reminded of the annual workplace training in my office on what to do if there is an active shooter in the building, a phrase I wish I could write as if it were an unthinkable act, but tragically cannot. The instructions were to “run, hide, fight.” Three increasingly active steps. The default step was to run away if you were able to, to get far away from the violence. If that wasn’t possible, you should hide in the nearest space where the violence couldn’t find you. The last step, if the violence found you, was to fight back.
I think of this when I see news stories about evil acts, and I wonder how many of us go to the default step. And stay there.
Run.
If we do face the stories, do we hide ourselves from their reality? Do we blame victims, assigning some action of theirs to why evil found them? WE would never drink in a frat house. This evil cannot reach us. WE are safe. This was just one incident. Yes, there is a victim, but the victim is not us and there’s nothing for us to do. We have found ourselves what we believe to be a safe space.
Fight.
The decision to fight comes when we realize that evil acts affect us all. There is no safety if we are not all safe. If we abandon people affected by evil, the evil and the harm it causes live a longer life. We must realize that fighting means not just addressing the specific act, which may be out of our hands, but fighting the thinking that enabled the act to happen in the first place, to happen in many places, and to happen over and over again:
- Boys will be boys but girls should follow some sort of behavior and dress code to be ‘good’ and ‘safe.’
- Women are somehow lesser than because there are Old Testament stories based on how society was thousands of years ago that must translate into how society should be now.
- Men will make the decisions that govern how women live, and women’s rights are those which men see fit to grant them.
- When in doubt, the justice system should err in favor of men.
These are not acceptable in God’s world. All of God’s people need to fight evil, not just run and hide. If we do not protect God’s creations, how can we be in relationship to God?
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27