Christianity Today

Piper said "If the kid was a total jerk, it wouldn't change the fact that a man with a gun doesn't track down and put himself in a position of likely having to use it if the kid turns out to be violent, unless his mindset is: That wouldn't be so bad after all." It's a dangerous thing to claim to be able to know the thoughts and intentions of another person. Only God has that power. Martin was in a gated neighborhood. There is only one way in and out. He wasn't visiting anyone. What was he doing there?

Mr. Zimmerman may not have been charged with a crime, but he was essentially under arrest for a time. An arrest by the governmental authorities is generally understood to mean you're not free to go. Mr. Zimmerman was hauled to the police station for questioning in handcuffs and let go only after an initial investigation revealed there wasn't probable cause to go forward with criminal charges at that time. Moreover, it's laughable to categorically state, as did Leslie I T Asaiah-Asher, that there is a bias against blacks in the judicial system. The opposite is usually the case, with prosecutors and judges bending over backwards to ignore racial motivations when it comes to black on white crime. But in the rare case where it's the reverse situation, the system becomes engaged, national media twist the facts and, in ABC News and NBC News cases, intentionally distort facts, and misguided Evangelicals like Piper begin wringing their hands bemoaning imagined racialist motives.

The issue is not whether Trayvon Martin did wrong or his charcter was questionable to 'deserve' being shot, but that the person who did the shooting was not arrested. Herein lies the problem, because undeniably if this was a reverse situation, that a black man shot a white kid, the issue would not be whether the black man was arrested but what kind of setencing would have been passed out by now. The black man would have been arrested first without question, regardless of whatever law is in place in Florida, without consideration of whether the white kid was of a questionable character or appearance (tattoos and piercings everywhere) deserving to be killed. This is the issue. Please my white brothers and sisters stop intellectualising this matter and rationalising it for facts of a questionable character of such a person who was killed without a weapon in hand as deeming 'deserving'. Racism is a systemic, systematic, endemic and institutional problem in America in need of review.