For the past week and a half, social media has melted down into a dumpster fire of virtue-signalling, accusations, anger, and finger-pointing. If you didn’t black out your profile photo for #BlackOutTuesday, you were probably insufficiently committed to combatting racism. If you didn’t immediately embrace Black Lives Matter, it was your knee on George Floyd’s neck, too. If you refused to climb aboard the raucous bandwagon without first asking who was driving it, Christians of a certain type relished telling others that they were irredeemable racists. One gets the sense that running into a view that differed from their own made these Christians feel a bit persecuted, and relished their brief participation in the ranks of the oppressed.
What has been incredibly frustrating is that the narrative of a “divided America” is not really accurate in this specific instance. I’d wager that around 90% of Americans agree on two things: George Floyd was brutally murdered, and the perpetrator should be brought to justice; and looting and burning down cities is wrong. Responding to a murder by creating more suffering is obviously not the answer, and people of good faith agree on that. We can all agree on these two basic facts, which means that in reality, we should have much common ground to work from.
