We watched this movie today at school about a white dude that got angry at 3 African American boys playing their music too loud at a gas station. The white guy mentioned to his fiancé how much he hated that rap music. He asked them to turn it down (rudely), the situation escalated, the man felt threatened because he thought he saw a gun, and he shot ten bullets through the jeep and killed one of the boys. (a gun was never found in the boy’s car).
He was convicted of murder.
You know how Jesus says, “You’ve heard it said ‘you shall not murder,’ but I say whoever is angry at his brother is liable to judgement”?
I think the loud music situation helped me figure out maybe why hate and murder are judged similarly.
I doubt the white man thought he would ever kill a kid, before that day. And I don’t know the whole situation but it appears the dude was angry and when the external circumstances pushed against him hard enough, he felt threatened with bullets and so his anger squeezed out of him as bullets.
And a boy died.
📷
I’ve found that I get angry when someone threatens to get in the way of what I want.
So maybe anger is just as bad because if the situation external to us pushes far enough into our anger we’ll use whatever we need to to defend ourselves. The anger and hate within us can become as dangerous as bullets.
Last week I was actually mad at one of my brothers and he was mad at me. Our phone call escalated. I said things I never thought I would say to my brother. Things I didn’t even realize were in me. The external situation pushed against me until I felt threatened and my anger popped out of me like sharp word-bullets.
And I’m afraid I hurt him. My anger wanted to hurt him.
And I’m lucky words were the only ammunition I had loaded that day because I love him. He is a very good man, husband, father and a very good brother and I had a chance to apologize to him. But I saw that if put into the wrong situation, when I felt threatened with more, I fired back with more.
I don’t feel like I’d ever kill someone, but this just showed me I would do things that I didn’t think I would. And maybe his point is that I must be careful about what emotions I foster in my heart because when caught off guard, it may pull the veil off of my emotion’s and they’ll rear their head and hurt somebody.
Raw Spoon, February 18, 2016
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