Recently my wife Grace and I saw "The Equalizer." It is described this way; "Denzel Washington is a retired mercenary pitted against ultra-violent Russian gangsters." I realized again how much satisfaction I get when in my reading or in my moviegoing, the evil done by some is responded to with justice. In the movie, it was done through Denzel Washington's, counter-violence.
In a Florida courtroom, justice was done this way; "A Florida man who shot an unarmed teen-ager to death during a dispute over loud music was convicted of first-degree murder on Wednesday after a jury rejected his claim that he fired his gun in self-defense.
Both of these events reminded me of Marvin Gaye singing in "What's Going On:" "Mother, mother, there's too many of you crying. Brother, brother, there's too many of you dying."
Historically and currently, there have been "too many" young and not-so-young black men killed by the police or would-be police, without any form of "Equa-lizing Justice". I confessvthat despite myself, something within me affirmed the "payback" that Denzel Washington extracted in the film, not in response to racism, but to those who engaged in the demeaning and diminishing of others.
But my deeper and better self believes that what happened in a Florida courtroom serves to create "Beloved Community", much more than that I saw in the film, Equalizer.
The Rev. Gil Caldwell of Asbury Park, NJ, is a retired clergy member of the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference.