Christian Realism & Tyre Nichols

The Memphis police killing of Tyre Nichols illustrates the conundrum of power and authority. According to Scripture and Christian teaching, God ordains government to “wield the sword” to protect civil order, specifically to protect the innocent from the malevolent.

But the state’s agents, in wielding the sword, themselves can succumb to dark impulses. Yet their failure to wield the sword effectively can lead to disorder, injustice, and harm for the most vulnerable who most need protection.

Tyre Nichols was stopped by police officers for what they describe as reckless driving. Presumably some level of resistance or defiance prompted the officers to pull him from his car, after which he was pepper sprayed, tasered, beaten, fled on foot, and then was further beaten. He was hospitalized and died three days later. Video records the officers using profanity amid threats: “I’m going to baton the f–k out of you.”

These officers seemed to beat him with enthusiasm and without restraint, although there’s no evidence that Nichols committed a major crime or posed a lethal threat. Even if he had, officers are still duty bound to restrain their emotions and administer only necessary force.

Human nature is such that persons with power and authority do not always exercise restraint. Power and authority even in the best of people can fuel arrogance, excess, and even sadism. Power can be a drug. And all persons with power over other persons have the potential propensity to abuse that power for their own gain or gratification. Power armed with lethal force can be mortally dangerous.

In most societies, governments have the most power. Public office holders and magistrates with their agents in the military and in law enforcement literally have the power of life and death, as they must. For most of history and in most cultures, these powers have been often very arbitrary. Miscreants, real or perceived, were quickly and harshly addressed through beatings, torture, execution, with or without any semblance of fair adjudication. Governing authorities in most times and cultures punish not just legitimate miscreants but also anybody who threatens or challenges their authority.

America and most contemporary societies expect civil authorities and law enforcement to act with restraint, to treat the alleged and proven guilty carefully and lawfully, and to protect the detained from physical harm to the greatest extent possible. This expectation has represented a great advance for civilization.

But people are still people, and will always remain so, with passions and emotions. Even well-trained police officers with high integrity and emotional equilibrium still have the capacity to respond to any perceived sign of resistance or disrespect with anger and unjustified violence. Exacting physical punishment in order to gain respect, to establish self-importance, or gratify sadistic impulses, is intrinsic to all fallen humanity, no matter their status in society.

The omnipresence of video technology has in recent years alerted the public to physical violence by law enforcement that previously was just alleged or conjectured without evidence. Every society to varying degrees must contend with state agents who exceed their authority and good judgement through unjustified and even criminal force, sometimes murderously. Any society striving for social stability and justice must work constantly to deter and punish unjustified force by law enforcement.

This need for vigilance will never go away. Our current social preoccupations, with some justification, focus on racial intentions and tensions. The officers who beat and killed Nichols were, like he, black. Some critics, in the spirit of our times, claim that Nichols is still the victim of racism, in that even black officers have racist assumptions about black people. Perhaps. Prejudice and stereotypes are also part of the fallen human condition.

But the abuse of authority does not depend on racism. Such abuse can emerge from a thousand other justifications, mostly rooted in the dark human desire to rule over, demean, and exploit others that we might exalt ourselves. A society aspiring towards decency, informed by Christian conscience, wanting equal justice for all alongside the option of mercy, constructs safeguards against abuse by all civil authorities. These safeguards must be especially strong for law enforcement, whose misconduct, by undermining public confidence, can be especially corrosive.

The other balance to be weighed is the social impact of undue restraint on law enforcement. If the police are reluctant to act, if they do not trust just their own judgement, if they fear undue and potentially unfair oversight, and if they are socially demonized, all of society will suffer.

The absence of robust and assertive law enforcement emboldens the most dangerous criminal elements of society, who will assert themselves with impunity. Criminal fear of law enforcement is central to social stability. Any perceived retreat by or timidity by law enforcement will undermine justice and social harmony. The weak and vulnerable will suffer more than the strong and powerful.

In short, misconduct by police can be dangerous and destabilizing. But emasculation of police can be even more dangerous and destabilizing. Wisdom and experience ideally seek a rough balance, in which law enforcement is lawful but aggressive. But we must always be aware that even in ideal circumstances, passions can inflame vices even by the otherwise virtuous.

Christian Realism is always seeking this elusive balance. How can sinful humanity live in peace and seek approximate justice when each person, unless a consistent sanctified saint, has some propensity for abusing power? We can learn from our mistakes, be constantly mindful of our weaknesses, watchful of ourselves and of others, trust in God’s superintending care, and like Him, extend mercy to others.

May God extend extra comfort to the family of Tyre Nichols, administer justice to his killers mixed with mercy, and provide wisdom to all in authority, especially law enforcement, reminding them that their power and weapons can be extensions of God’s justice or descend into demonic instruments for the perversion of justice.