March 2025 Article

 On July 5, 2016 officers responded to a convenience store about 12:35 a.m. after an anonymous caller indicated a man selling music CDs and wearing a red shirt threatened him with a gun, Baton Rouge police have said.  Two officers responded and had some type of altercation with the man in the parking lot, and one officer fatally shot the suspect.  This resulted in the death of Alton Sterling age 37.  The U.S. Justice Department said the FBI’s New Orleans Division, the Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Louisiana have opened a civil rights investigation.
      On July 6, as far as I know, the first live stream of the aftermath of a shooting appears on Facebook with the officer a few feet away.  It’s the shooting of Philando Castile, 32, with a narration of his fiancée Diamond Reynolds and her 4-year-old daughter in the back seat.  This took place in Falcon Heights, outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota.  All of this took place while the blood was still pouring out of his body and no effort at that time was made to save his life.  
            “He let the officer know that he had a firearm, and he was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him in his arm,” Reynolds said as she broadcast the details of Wednesday’s evening shooting on Facebook.  According to news reports he was shot 4 times; he was another African American who was a school nutrition services supervisor who was popular among his colleagues and students according to his employer.  It was stated that he was pulled over for a broken taillight.  He informed the officer he was armed and had a concealed carry permit.  It is also eight months after the police killing of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis which started demonstrations and marches when officers involved where not charged.
             Two days later a young African American man, age 25, (I know his name, I just have chosen not to repeat it), was angry about the shootings; a military veteran who served in Afghanistan chose to take his anger out by killing 5 Dallas police officers and shooting 12 in an ambush.  The officers who had nothing to do with the other incidents were, Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa.  This is total displaced anger, and no one anywhere should have been shot because of these horrific events.  I am told it was the deadly single incident for U.S. law enforcement since September 11, 2001.  
             All of these incidents spur a number of conversations about gun control, racism, profiling, anger management and so much more.  I would like to talk about how to handle our anger in better ways.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind.  The time is always right to do the right thing.”  Hate can never conquer hate, only love can conquer hate.
           “How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways…I love thee…” The words of that well-known sonnet came from the pen and heart of a woman personally acquainted with the healing power of a love turned outward.
           Elizabeth Barrett fell from a pony when she was 15 and remained incapacitated though there was no real evidence of damage to bodily functions.
           With several brothers and sisters in the family, her condition proved to be most convenient.  She received preferential care and attention, a room of her own, and she faired quite well.
           Even as her literary career grew; she kept her symptoms.  However, when she was 40, she met Robert Browning, who was 6 years younger.  In a short time, they were married, and Elizabeth’s symptoms disappeared!  At 41, she was climbing mountains.  At 43, she had a child.
           For 25 years, the object of her love had been herself.  Her behavior patterns were established so they would bring gratification to self.  Oh, she was convinced her injuries were real, but convinced by a heart that was deceitful, a heart willing to sacrifice mobility to satisfy greater emotional needs.
           But when Robert Browning appeared and became the object of her love, she was healed.  When she began loving someone else more than herself, she was freed from her living prison of hypochondria.  She no longer needed her symptoms.
           When oneself is the object of love, it constricts one’s world to an extremely small circumference.  It isolates.  There is no room for intruders.  It treats others as if they exist only to serve its purposes.  Deep fulfillment is never quite reached; there is always something missing, but when self turns its love outward, the very things longed for are suddenly possessed!  
            I know it sounds over simplistic, but what the world needs now is love sweet love.  A great example took place in 1983.  Pope John Paul II said his prison meeting with Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, in which the pontiff shook hands with and forgave his would-be assassin, was a “historic day in my life.” Agca, a Muslim who once said he shot the pope because he was a symbol of Christianity, bent one knee and kissed John Paul’s hand on December 27, 1983 at the end of the 21-minute meeting in Agca’s cell in the Rebibbia maximum security prison.
            “I have spoken to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who enjoys my trust,” a Vatican spokesman quoted the pope as saying.
              The pope refused to disclose what he said to Agca, 25, who was unshaven and dressed in a blue sweater and jeans.  “This is a secret that must remain between him and me,” he said.
              But speaking to women inmates in a separate part of the prison, he said it is the third time he has pardoned Agca for shooting him May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square.  “Today, after more than two years, I was able to meet my attacker and repeat the pardon, which I immediately granted him and which I was able to repeat in public when it was possible from the hospital,” the pope said.
              “This will remain for me a historic day in my life as a man, as a Christian and as bishop of Rome,” he said.  “The Lord made it possible for us to meet as men, as brothers.” Agca, he said, “made an attack on my life, but providence conducted things in its own way, which all would call exceptional, I would even say marvelous.”
      May Pope John Paul II be an example to us all.  God bless America!

Darrell W. Cummings,
Pastor of Bethlehem Temple, Wheeling, WV
& Shiloh Apostolic Faith Assembly, Weirton, WV