Ryan Moats at Louisiana Tech- if you thought he was anonymous now, imagine how anonymous he was playing football at Louisiana Tech. Did you even know there was a football team at Louisiana Tech? Did you even know there was a Louisiana Tech?
Have you heard about the Ryan Moats saga yet? If not, I highly recommend reading some articles on it- it's a great commentary about so many different aspects of our society, how race and power interact, how split second decisions can have lasting impacts on the rest of our lives...and how things are seldom as black and white as they seem.
I'm going off of memory, so I'm not going to get into a lot of details. It would be very easy to just look up the articles, and actually do some research for this post...but really you should just be happy that I'm writing something...it might not be the best, but it is not the worst. I should probably be doing something more productive like homework, or updating my 'Darth Vader' Facebook page.
So the gist of it is that Ryan Moats, who is a back-up NFL running back with the Houston Texans, ran a red-light on his way to the hospital and got pulled over. What happened next apparently transpired over 13 minutes, all of which was caught on a camera from the patrol car. In sum, things became very heated, the officer ended up pulling his gun on the Moats family, and Moats' mother-in-law ended up dying before they were able to get there.
I apologize for a very brief synopsis...I would encourage you to read the articles for yourself.
Public backlash against the officer was very quick and harsh- the Dallas police department was quick to condemn the actions of the officer, who ended up issuing a public apology and eventually resigning.
There is so much going on here, it's not even funny. Really, it makes me upset at the whole 'sound bite' philosophy of our culture. There is 13 minutes of footage...but I'm willing to bet that the 13 minutes has not been looked at in context- at least not by the masses. We get to make our judgements on the scraps that fall from the table of Behind The Scenes. And so this is how we draw our conclusions, in our Internet/Blog/Twitter culture, while the official word on the streets is the media spin on this sad ordeal
I'm not siding with the police officer per se...but it is not a slam dunk for Moats either. Imagine you are a police officer in Dallas, and it's dark out (I don't know what time it is, but the video footage that I saw took place in the dark), and a guy runs a red light...and then who knows what happened...all I know is that at some point, Moats made a flippant remark to the officer about not being able to find his registration, more words were exchanged, people left the vehicle... you might be a little on edge and possibly overreact. Otherwise, you might be a dead officer.
Really the only reason this is a story is because Moats' mother-in-law died and they were unable to see her because of this incident with the officer. Now, I'm not trying to demean in any way the fact that they were robbed of spending precious last moments with a very dear person to their lives. I am just pointing out that this is the independent variable that changes the whole situation and blurs the lines between who is right and who is wrong.
Is the officer evil? Not necessarily- and in fact, what I'm getting is that there are probably things he's doing that he should have been doing. Someone runs a red light and becomes belligerent when you pull them over. I can imagine they were in some ways at least a little hysterical. Then they leave the car. At some point, your fight-or-flight has to go off, and if you are an officer that does not choose 'fight' in that situation...well, you might not be qualified to serve and protect. And really, if you are an officer, I'm sure you've heard your share of sob stories that were really nothing but people trying to get out of a bad situation. It is almost as if a collective 'Boy who cried wolf' became entangled in this perfect storm that left one family devastated and an officer out of a job.
This situation is so intriguing to me because it isn't a simple case of black and white, right and wrong. You'd think it would be- because their mother-in-law was dying, for crying out loud! Is that officer not human? But if you take a step back, and look at the facts in an objective way...you start to see that this is not necessarily the actions of a racist, insensitive police officer on a power trip. Sure, at some point another officer was able to confirm that the Moats' story was true. I'm not sure what point that happened at. Adrenaline is a funny thing...I can imagine it was difficult to 'stand down' at that point. Does that make it right though?
One thing that I have reaffirmed for me in this story, and I hope you are all able to look at and take to heart is that we should not be so quick to judge the actions of others. There is so much going on that we will never know, that we cannot even hope to know. Two lives, officer Robert Powell and Ryan Moats, have been journeying independently from the time of their births up until this situation. They have had different upbringings, different beliefs, and different experiences. Each factor, each variable adds a new twist, a new wrinkle into the story. What we are left with is a mess that no person on Earth is qualified to untangle. We try, and we take comfort in the masses that are so quick to point the finger in the same direction that we are. Just be careful, because those fingers can so easily be swayed against you. And then you find yourself pulled over on the way to see a dying loved one, arguing with an unreasonable police officer. You find yourself put into a situation having to make a split second decision between empathy and survival. What will you do? How will they react? Who is right, and who is wrong?
I've been reading several comments on one of the ESPN articles from readers...it's sad that so many people are so certain of so many things...the real truth of this whole matter is that it was a very unfortunate event for all involved, and the aftermath has birthed the emergence of our age-old tendency as people to pass our judgements on our fellow man.
Post script- I've always been a little leery of preachers or speakers who claim that they did not know what they were going to say and then 'BAM' they received a divine message from a talking trash can that will self destruct in 10 seconds and so you better listen...
I think that Inspector Gadget is where my intense dislike of cats was birthed. And arm chairs. And metal arms with spiked bracelets.
I mean, they could very well be telling the truth...but it has always reeked of propaganda to me. Like, 'this message is obviously divinely inspired, therefore you should listen to it'.
So with that disclaimer...I had an epiphany after writing this. I wasn't visited by an angel. There were no trumpets blaring. It was just me and my thoughts. But oh what a thought!
Jesus came to fulfill the (spiritual*) law because THE LAW WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE THE LAW! Now, maybe some of you have already latched on to this. If so, congrats. You can probably stop reading now. But think about this...we all lament the fact that there is so much gray in the world. We try and apply our black and white moral code to situations that cannot possibly be weighed on the scales of human justice. And it isn't like having more information will make things easier...in fact, the more info we have sometimes the harder it is to make a judgement call.
I'm not advocating relativism, I'm not saying that God intened a blank slate for morality. What I'm saying is that we try to apply this code to our lives, to each other, to humanity. I don't think that's what it was for. Sure, it helps us to live right. But I believe that the law was created to show humanity that it could not, on its own merit, live up to the standards of holiness.
Too often we get caught up in using the law to judge others, and to exalt ourselves in our own eyes. The truth is we have all broken the law. Even by breaking the smallest part, we have broken the whole thing. We are not innocent in this. It makes me mad when people are like, 'Are Muslims going to hell? Are Buddhists going to hell? Are gays going to hell?'. We are all in the same boat, humanity is in the same boat. That's the point. That is what Jesus did. He fulfilled the law, he fulfilled the standard. By His sacrifice, we are now able to live up to what we could not do on our own.
Now I just have to figure out how the first part led to the second part...
*- When I say 'law', it's like in the Ten Commandments sense, although not explicitly just the Ten.
Pictures:
Ryan Moats- http://i.a.cnn.net/si/football/2005/draft/players/images/ryan_moats.jpg
Dr. Claw- http://cartoonoveranalyzations.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/drclaw.jpg
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