Those who want peace offer forgiveness

So someone tried to get into our house again today. I was making calls for Breaking Free when I heard someone jiggle our front door knob, and when I looked towards the door, I saw a black guy looking in our side window. This is the second time in a couple months that I’ve seen people looking in our windows while I’m home, and last time I went outside and asked the guy what he was doing. As some of you know, last year we were burglarized twice and thousands of dollars worth of stuff was stolen both times. Our former roommate’s car was broken into while she was parked outside the garage at the back of the house, and I’ve lost two bicycles since we’ve lived in this house. I feel like we are being attacked, because we are being attacked, and not be demons. Our property and living space is being violated by strangers, and knowing that they’re poking around our doors and windows, waiting for an opportunity to get in again makes me feel like we’re under siege.

My first reaction is to run, to get out of a neighborhood where we’re clearly not welcome, where we’re being victimized by crime, where young black men are looking in my windows, testing the strength of my doors, and stealing change out of my piggy bank. If I can’t run, I’ll fortify. Get stronger locks, stronger doors, refuse to be in the house alone, get a dog, cling to my strong husband for protection. I want the cops to get those people, to fix the problem of crime in my neighborhood, I want to make them targets so they can end up in jail where they belong.

But then i think, are any of those things going to fix the problem? And isn’t the real problem racial inequality, inner-city education, poverty, and drugs? Will bringing more guns and more power to control into this situation really make it better? And perhaps more important even than that, for serious, what the hell would Jesus do? And I think, while I am experiencing crime and violence and enmity from these people, what do they experience from me? On a basic human level I feel that the right to be left alone is real, but it might not be enough. As long as the only contact I have with these young men is through the proxy of police with guns and the threat of jail, there will always be crime and violence in my neighborhood. As much as it doesn’t make any sense at all, we know that the only way to end the cycle is with forgiveness.

What does that look like? I think for me in this situation, at least part of it looks like interacting with people in my neighborhood who scare me, who look different than me, who might have riffled through my closet. It looks like approaching them personally, not through an armed proxy. It might look like inviting my neighbors into my home, or at least into my yard, and letting them know that I think they are worth knowing. It might look like getting to know the children on my block and telling them that they are valuable and capable of great things. It might look like putting up a note of forgiveness and love for the offenders, instead of a poster with their physical description and warning that they’re dangerous. It looks like maybe behaving like my safety comes from God, not from my security system, my steel doors, or my police department. Behaving as if I am safe even knowing that something bad might happen. It looks downright stupid and backwards, which is kind of how I know I’m on the right track.

Discussion on this is welcome, and prayers are greatly appreciated.