I live in a city that had more murders last year than New York City and Los Angeles combined.
In 2016 alone, Chicago had 3,550 shooting incidents, 762 homicides. That’s two murders and ten shootings per day. Per day. What is more, that number (762) has surged considerably from the previous year: in 2015 there were – I cannot say ‘only’ – 496 murders. Now, given the huge population of Chicago, the actual murder rate per capita is not even close to the highest in America. But the combination of sheer numbers of those killed and the dramatic increase over the last year has many understandably concerned. There is a ‘we must do something about this’ moment approaching.
How to respond?
I will leave the policy setting, and the policing, and the structures and laws, to those far more qualified than I am to speak about such matters.
What interests me, and about which I have more legitimacy to speak, is in what sense and to what degree is the church itself to respond to such issues of violence? There is a lengthy, nuanced debate within the history of Christianity about the right balance between ‘word and deed’ (see Romans 15.18), and a desire among some to ensure that, in our honourable contemporary sensibility to loving our neighbour in practical ways, we must not forget to prioritise evangelism itself.
I am less concerned here about that, important as finding that right prioritisation is – about which Dr Duane Litfin has written an excellent book called Word versus Deed: Resetting the Scales to a Biblical Balance (Crossway, 2012).
Would I have found a way out?
I am more concerned to make an observation, historically valid, I think, and contem-porarily active. I remember, when I was living in another city and in a downtown and somewhat downtrodden neighbourhood, asking myself what, if anything, I would have done if I had been born in this area. Would I have managed to carve a ‘better’ life for myself?
As I walked through the area I could not honestly say that, if my circumstances and birth had been different, I would have necessarily found a way ‘out’. That was rather discouraging, until I also walked past one of the several excellent churches in that area. The light – in terms of discipline (in the best sense), happy (in the truly joyful sense), ordered families, individuals and communities – streaming out of that building after a prayer meeting was, well, I suppose I must say it, ‘salt’ and ‘light’ in the world. There was no doubt in my mind, and there has never been any doubt since, that the great hope, the real presence and active change agent in such areas in America is, very often, the church. When the church is the church, in all its preaching, praying and practice, it fulfills Jesus’s calling to be salt and light.
Josh Moody is the senior pastor of College Church, Wheaton, Illinois.
FOOTNOTE
1. http://abcnews.go.com/US/chicagos-control-violence-produces-762-homicides-2016/story?id =44402951
