When Justice Reigns…in a post 1/6/21 world

Peace, love, unity!

I’ve been reading and hearing a lot of talk about promoting peace in articles, sermons, and conversations across our land since January 6.

Peace…a topic I think about constantly and value dearly in my writings.  

Peace, love, and unity! My goodness, we all want that, don’t we?

I agree with those values wholeheartedly.

On the corner of accountability

But jumping straight to the position of peace without stopping on the corner of accountability, is too much of a shortcut for my thinking. My regular compass and my moral compass take me on a journey with a bit more landscape in between.

America, after all, did not come to January 6, 2021 in one giant step of discord either.

We crept up to it year by year, lie by lie, wrongdoing by wrongdoing over the course of years, many years. 

Along the way, we allowed missteps of injustice, unaccounted for crimes against humanity, and unyielding prejudices to become “normalized”.

In the end, we minimized the wrong things.

It starts with a little lie. 

And when that lie is accepted and repeated over and over again from the literal top down, distrust is put into motion. Confusion and chaos then step in to manage the circus of misinformation and disinformation. Once those who are watching see that this method works to fool the masses, then everyone gets in on the act. Pretty soon, distrust is in full swing and the little lies get mixed in with the facts. Bigger lies, the more important ones, are born.

When truth is no longer respected and anything can be truth, we have lost control. 

---

Timothy Snyder, in his book, “On Tyranny, 20 Lessons from the 20th Century”, writes “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”  

On Tyranny, 20 Lessons from the 20th Century, by Timothy Snyder

We allow all that to happen every time we look the other way in order to keep the peace; or brush off blatant hypocrisy because we don’t want to make waves; and every time we allow excuses to cloud our view of what is happening right before our very eyes. 

It is inconvenient to speak up!  

And it is definitely unpopular to speak out against something. 

I know.  I have had a text or two ignored because I am certain it made the receiver uncomfortable.

I understand that.  No one wants to feel uncomfortable. Though, I find if I am feeling uncomfortable about something, it usually means that I need to take a second look, or take a closer look. But it doesn’t mean I can look away.

It even feels uncomfortable to post this piece today. I am almost certain it will have repercussions from some corners. But I would rather stand for something I truly believe in and lose approval, than whitewash a message to you and sell my soul in the process.

I want to say right now, that I am not pointing a finger to others and not myself. I hold the same scrutiny over my own thoughts and actions that I hold for everyone else. I really don’t believe in smoothing “things” over until the “things” have been buried and forgotten. I am not one to stay silent while something has been misrepresented. And I don’t believe in sweeping things under the rug. 

And have you taken a look under any rugs lately? I lifted up a big rug from my garage the other day and was appalled. There was a whole lot of filth and mess underneath, while all around it was pristine clean. We have to take that rug out in bright light and fresh air, and shake it silly till that we get all the mess out. Then and only then should we put that rug back in place.

To move forward with any kind of common sense, we need to shake a few things out. We have to deal with the uncomfortable truth that maybe we have not seen something exactly as it is; or maybe we are not willing to give something up in order to right a wrong. We have to be willing to be uncomfortable, at the very least, in order to gain the peace we so desire.

I embrace peace, love and unity…with all my heart and soul. And I agree with all the talk and the sermons and the soul searching. 

But there can be no peace without justice. 

Sometimes, that’s the problem…we want to skip from one tragedy to another without a painful stop at the corner of accountability. 

We are a nation in need of repentance, accountability and justice, and yes, peace.

The way of forgiveness and genuine peace is first through acknowledgment of wrongdoings, crimes, lies. 

What comes next is accountability and justice.  In some cases that may look like severe punishment, especially for egregious crimes against our country or against humanity.

Let’s not confuse what justice means. 

It does not mean storming the halls of our nation’s capitol and demanding to “hang” the Vice President. Erecting nooses and guillotines across our land is not justice. Bringing the confederate flag into the United States of America’s legislative building is not justice. Waving the Holy Bible while beating up the Capitol Police is not justice.

None of those things has the slightest thing to do with justice or “peacefully” protesting! They are an abomination of anything we hold dear as Americans. 

We do need to unite together as Americans, now more than ever!

We do need to extend love and grace to each other and ourselves as we move on from all of this to something greater than we have seen for a while, I mean a long while. We do need peace to reign in our country. 

But first we must do the hard and uncomfortable work of rooting out evil, sorting through to find the lies and the truths, administering fair and appropriate justice and accountability wherever it is needed. 

The way to never repeat this horror again is to address the wrongs swiftly and outright and let justice prevail once again. 

“There is no shortcut to anywhere worth going”.

Those are the words on the back of the compass necklace my daughter gave me. 

They have applied in many things in my life since the day I fastened it around my neck as a constant reminder of not taking the easy way out of any problem. They apply now to our country.

We must do the hard thing now.

The right thing to do is right before our very eyes! 

Let’s take our collective rose colored glasses off and replace them with laser sharp vision that sees the truth and values the future enough to do something about it. 

Then we can have peace, glorious peace!