When We Forget How to Weep

We're going to have to recover many things, and one of them is our tears

“Weeping, tears of pity” Guillaume-Benjamin-Amant Duchenne (de Boulogne) and Adrien Tournachon (1862)

Seeing the gruesome images from Minneapolis (the shootings, the elder citizen dragged from his home without a warrant, so many more), I cannot comprehend how we are not unified in our outrage. Love of country, support for good law enforcement officers (there are many), and even a desire for an ordered immigration policy ought not contradict a baseline conviction: protestors should not be gunned down, and every human should be treated with dignity. Abusive power aimed at one inevitably wounds us all. We measure our liberty not by the freedoms we maintain for ourselves but by how we safeguard these same freedoms for those with whom we vehemently disagree.

How did we arrive here? How, in the deep terrain of the soul, did we become so riddled by fear, so driven by our political identities, that every escalating horror—those wrenching tragedies where I think surely this will rattle us so we see what we’ve become and reclaim the humanity we really do share—only reinforces our antipathy, re-entrenches us in our rage? How do we return to one another? How do we find our way back to some shared common life? How do we create a generous life rather than an angry, shriveling existence? How do we become neighbors again?

Whatever must happen to regain our sanity, I’m convinced of at least one necessity: we are going to have to reconnect with our tears. Our tears for those who are suffering. And especially our tears when the ones who are suffering are ones we see as the problem, the ones we’ve written off.

Paul describes the community of Jesus as a people who weep with those who weep.* (Romans 12:14) The instructions seem reasonable, virtuous, and humane. A friend’s child is dying, one of the couples at church is hitting the rocks, a family from the elementary school loses everything in a fire, someone on our block gets devastating news from the doctor — when we encounter the heartbreaks of those near us, only a cruel, stony heart would refuse to join them in their sorrows.

But so much of this passage deals with how we’re to offer compassion not to our friends but our adversaries, those we think have done us wrong (the letter was first written to Christians oppressed by the Roman empire). There’s even that ridiculous line where Paul has the gall to tell us to bless our persecutors and feed our enemies. Connecting to the pain of those with whom we feel kinship or affection is easy, but the real trick is when we join the pain of those we’ve cast aside or labeled in ways which make it easier to dismiss their story.

Rediscovering our tears will require our refusal to abandon another’s humanity, refusing to ignore their belovedness in the eyes of God. We learn again how to be curious about another’s pain or wound—how their tragedies and hopes have shaped their life or convictions. We resist the terror of scarcity, the panic over what we might lose or what might be taken from us. We remember there will always be enough for all God’s children; it just may require a little imagination to see how.

We surrender to the grueling, costly work of love, the unflagging hope that we might all find our way together into the house of goodness and plenty. We feel others’ heartache. How can Paul’s disorienting words not transform our assumptions about every human, every person (even those we fear), every immigrant? Our country, and our churches, have a hundred sins; but at our best, we’ve always been people of compassion and grace. Our better impulses have always led us to build bridges, protect the vulnerable, and sacrifice for the love of our many neighbors. We can abandon our madness and return to these fundamental truths. We really can.

We’re going to have to surrender to all kinds of repentance and renewal if our individual and national soul is ever to be healed and whole. But we can begin here—we can find our way back to our tears.

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The post is mercifully finished, but I had a few other thoughts, if by any chance you haven’t had enough. Here are a few barely edited footnotes, if you’re interested.

[Footnote 1: An excursus on Romans 13]

*Romans 13 (the passage connected to the “weep with those who weep” lines) has been getting lots of press the past couple weeks: Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted.

Understandably, this Scripture often gets thrown in the mix whenever Christians directly protest our government, though it’s often used to immediately brush away almost any protest or civil disobedience (outside of being asked to deny the faith—which raises the question of how many ways might we be tempted to deny our faith…) as inherently invalid. The magistrate is ordained by God, which means our only course is to stay in our lane, or so the thinking goes. Of course, God ordains all kind of things (families and parents, pastors and churches, even businesses to serve the common good), but this divine mandate doesn’t shield us from being corrected, confronted, or called to account for abuses. Receiving authority from God makes us more accountable to enact justice, not less.

It’s curious to me how this passage gets added play not in times of order and peace but in times of unrest, flashpoints when growing numbers of us are convinced some governmental action is unjust. “That Romans 13 is most often invoked not when the state is acting justly,” wrote Russell Moore, “but when Christians feel the urge to quiet their consciences ought to trouble us.” It sure troubles me.

At any rate, in America, non-violent (an important component) protest is one of the fundamental rights we the people have been given by which to call our government to account (John Inazu’s short post is really helpful here). So, when we practice the First Amendment, might we actually be submitting to the government by utilizing the process afforded us? As a society, we need what Dr. King called “nonviolent gadflies.”

I’d like to see us ponder more deeply how Paul’s instructions (in the very same passage) to “weep with those who weep” reframes our understanding of these governing authorities. Even more, we should consider the peculiar ways Paul tells us we are “to overcome evil” (and how we are "to not be overcome by evil”). God gives governments their authority, which means they don’t get to simply make up whatever they want and call it God’s will. It doesn’t work this way for any of us. Our submission to God-ordained authority is an expression of—not at odds with—God’s deep compassion and justice. And sometimes the people might have to stand up and loudly say so.

[Footnote #2: Something’s wrong with the story]

On the issue of immigration, the need for a secure and humane border is real, and the failures of recent years to deal with these realities have bred chaos. We of course need to have ordered borders and a legal (generous, I’d add) process for immigration. However, the rationale for our current ferocious, unconstitutional immigration enforcement surge is supposedly because we are going after violent criminals. However, the vast majority of those being targeted and deported are not even slightly under the suspicion of having committed a violent crime (lots of mothers and high schoolers and students and people working jobs, contributing to the economy and communities and churches and even in a number of cases paying taxes, people hear with legal status even). This is not merely about rooting out violent criminals. Almost no one is taking issue with going after people who kill and steal and traffic people or drugs.

In most cases, we’re talking about enforcing our immigration laws with good people who came here to better their life, same as I might well try to do if I were in their shoes. We of course must have laws and safe borders, and we can have a sane argument about the best way to do that (and there have been squandered—or sabotaged—opportunities in recent years). But whatever we do, the enforcement itself must be lawful, and humane. This is America for crying out loud.

I’m befuddled by this whole energizing idea controlling much of the narrative: the assumption that we’re under an national emergency because of a tsunami of violent undocumented immigrant crime--but it’s fiction. Some immigrants, like every group of humans, of course, commit crimes—and should be apprehended when they do so. However, consistent and numerous research bears out how undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than native born persons (a recent figure I read on the most violent crime—murder—was significantly less). I am not saying we don’t need to target undocumented violent criminals (and I have deep sorrow for each person and family harmed by their evil), but I am saying that however we target them, we need to target ourselves even more. We citizens commit more crimes, and more violent crimes. Given the facts, I fear this “crime rash” narrative is being pushed because it’s how good people will accept oppressive actions we would not otherwise. If everything’s for our safety, then we’re willing to allow a lot of things which would normally horrify us. History shows this tragic exercise over and again.

Here’s a couple studies showing how immigrant (legal and undocumented) commit fewer crimes than citizens. There are many such reports.

Department of Justice: Undocumented Immigrant Offending Rate Lower Than U.S.-Born Citizen Rate (a study from the state of Texas)

Cato Institute Study: Legal immigrants have the lowest incarceration rates, and native-born Americans have the highest. Illegal immigrants are in the middle.