President Trump announced Monday that he was dispatching his border czar, Tom Homan, to Minnesota amid outrage over the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents. He also suggested in a phone call with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz that he is open to reducing the number of federal immigration agents in the state, the governor said after the call.

As you know, Mr. Pretti, a US Department of Veterans Affairs ICU nurse in Minneapolis, was killed by ICE agents on Saturday. He was carrying a 9mm handgun for which he had a legal permit. The Department of Homeland Security stated, “The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. . . . Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots.”

However, according to CBS News, video from the scene and witness accounts are “at odds with official statements.” NBC News reports that “some policing experts said the shooting appeared unjustified and one said it amounted to murder.” President Trump told the Wall Street Journal that the administration is “reviewing everything and will come out with a determination.”

Whom do you blame for this tragedy?

• Mr. Pretti, whom Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s homeland security adviser, called a “domestic terrorist”?
• ICE agents, whom critics call “inexperienced” and “minimally trained”?
• Mr. Trump, whom Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called upon to “end this operation”?
• Gov. Walz, whom White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused of encouraging “left-wing agitators to stalk and record federal officers in the middle of lawful operations”?
• Democrats who, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), “supported Biden’s open border, which created the mess that now must be cleaned up”?

All of the above? None of the above?

How do you know moon rocks are from the moon?

Unless you have information unavailable to the rest of us, my guess is that you are filtering what you read, hear, and see by what you think you already know. Your prior beliefs regarding Mr. Trump, ICE activities, and Democrats are likely governing your view of the present tragedy.

I’m not accusing you of partisan bias: this is how nearly everyone knows nearly everything they know.

I know that Minneapolis exists because I have been there personally. But I had not met Mr. Pretti, have never met an ICE agent, and have no personal relationship with anyone else in this story. How, then, am I to interpret it apart from what I do know and believe?

My two great-aunts were convinced astronauts never went to the moon, that the TV coverage of Neil Armstrong and the rest of it was staged to steal money from American taxpayers. When I asked them about moon rocks I saw in a museum, they asked, “How do you know they’re from the moon?” I hadn’t thought of that.

We learn new words by associating them with our existing vocabulary. If I told you my “mumblephump” was in the shop for repairs, you wouldn’t know if I was talking about my vehicle, my son’s guitar, or my grandfather’s antique watch, among other options. But if I told you that it needed a new transmission and a brake job, you’d know that I was probably using a strange word for a car. This is because you already know what “transmission” and “brake job” mean.

If you’re an average American, you know about six hundred people. The existence, character, and activities of the other 343 million of us are known to you only through sources who know them better than you do.

Why a greenhouse becomes bright

This matters because our “post-truth” culture has abandoned objectivity for subjectivity, so we have no objective means by which to test our biases. In a media world where subscriptions have replaced advertising revenue, causing outlets to focus on producing content their customers want to purchase, our biases become even more entrenched.

As a result, when divisive tragedies such as Mr. Pretti’s death occur, whatever their actual reasons, we have no way to achieve an unbiased understanding of what happened, much less what to do about it. And so our political and cultural divisiveness continues and deepens.

But there is a way Christians can be part of the solution rather than the problem.

Secularism leaves us with no transcendent hope since we have no source of help but ourselves. Religions across human history offer the opposite: a God or gods who do what they do independent of our agency.

By contrast, the heart of Christianity is the claim that Christ can live in our hearts. As Oswald Chambers noted, “The Holy Spirit will make all that Jesus did effectual in me.” C. S. Lewis agreed, writing in Mere Christianity:

The Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because he loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

As God makes us “good,” he manifests himself in our minds, hearts, and lives (Galatians 2:20). We can have his wisdom by which to interpret the events of our world if we seek and submit to his Spirit’s guidance (John 14:26). We can have his compassion by which to love those who do not love us (John 13:34). We can have his character by which to demonstrate the radical difference he makes in our lives (Romans 8:29).

Asking your father for money to buy him a present

The key is to recognize how passionately our Father loves us and then to ask his Spirit to manifest his love for our Father in our hearts in response (Galatians 5:22). It’s like a child who asks her father for money to buy him a Christmas present.

When we love our Father with his love, we love others and ourselves in the same way. We then become the change we wish to see in our broken culture. And neither we nor those we influence can ever be the same.

Diadochos of Photiki (c. 400–c. 486) noted:

Anyone who loves God in the depths of his heart has already been loved by God. In fact, the measure of a man’s love for God depends upon how deeply aware he is of God’s love for him.

How “deeply aware” of God’s love are you today?

NOTE: Dr. Ryan Denison will offer an in-depth analysis of the recent ICE shootings in his weekly newsletter, The Focus, when it is published later today. I strongly encourage you to subscribe, which you can do here.

Quote for the day:

“The greatest honor we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.” —Julian of Norwich (c. 1343–1416)

Our latest website resources:

• What is the purpose of the Board of Peace? Trusting God when we cannot see him
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• Greenland explained, Indiana’s championship run, Iran updates, Minnesota tensions & Epstein files
• Faith and politics, yoga and Christian practice, salvation, and hope in a divided culture
• Is Greenland worth what it will cost the United States?

 

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