Justice

George Floyd

If you’ve been following the news recently, you may have heard about the racial tensions going on the US. And if you haven’t heard about it, you probably should read or watch more news because this is important stuff, and the entire world is being affected.

The more I think about it, the more we actually may be able to learn something from it, even though this is happening far, far away. So today what I want to do is to explain what happened in this case, get your reactions about it, and then see what we can learn and apply to our own situation. Uncle Kok Shin’s lesson on prejudice is actually quite relevant to this.

For those who might not be aware of what’s happened, there is a wikipedia page with the full story and details. For our time today, I want to just outline briefly the events that happened. There are too many details and background information to talk about, although they are very important. If there’s anything that doesn’t make sense, please ask.

25th May - Floyd died in police custody; social media floods with cries for justice

26th May - The first night of violent protests in Minneapolis

27th May - Protests spread to other cities like Los Angeles and Memphis

28th May - National Guard activated

29th May - Officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck charged with murder

2nd June - All 4 officers charged

Okay, now I’d like for us to have a little discussion and sharing. You guys have probably seen some news or stuff on social media about this phenomenon. And I’d like to hear what your thoughts about it.

One more thing before we share: this is the kind of thing where we can have very strong emotions and opinions, and we might disagree with one another in some ways. So let me say now that this is a safe space for us to share. We are children of God and followers of Christ, and we listen to one another in love. And to obey Christ, we need to ask ourselves how we would respond to world situations like this. How can something so tragic and so violent and so evil be used for God’s glory? We don’t need to have the answers now, but my hope is that through our sharing and discussion, we can know how to approach such situations.

So I’d like to hear: what have you guys been seeing, and how do you feel about it? You can talk about how you feel towards the situation in the US, or how you feel about the responses that you’ve seen by your friends on social media or the news.

Bible

Tsadakah - right relationships

Mishpat - restributive and restorative justice

What would you tell people in the US based on these things? How would you encourage them to recover?

Application

Is there racism and/or prejudice in our own countries?

Other Christians, non-Christians, Christians who have been going to church but stopped

Where in our society have we been complicit in injustice?

Lower income households?

Students from certain CCAs

Students from certain academic streams/schools

Foreign manual laborers

Our own church and youth group: almost all of us are Chinese. We had Cole for a while, but very few of us actually talked to him. And even now you may see some people in this Zoom call that you actually don’t know very well, and you may even feel uncomfortable around them.

What can we do about it?