Love your neighbor as yourself.
Who is my neighbor?
Whoever neighborhood watch says he is, apparently.
Was Martin a neighbor? Absolutely not. Did he belong there? No. Would it be better if he wasn't dead? Possibly. What do YOU personally know? Not enough to be dismissing the verdict of a jury of their peers, particularly in a sermon. How about some healing and reconciliation? How about reminding your congregation that they were not in the jury box, and they did not hear the evidence that persuaded six women, some of them mothers, to acquit a Hispanic man in the death of a child.
As for your snide reference to the neighborhood watch, basic Christian decency would mandate giving the man credit for trying to help his neighbors and protect them! If we use the same logic that was used against Zimmerman on you, I can extrapolate from your tendency to reference your clerical status in posts on public affairs or politics, that just as Zimmerman became a watchman to feel important and act like a cop, so too have you become a minister in order to feel important and to use that status to give yourself the aura of authority. Or we could assume that both of you had good intentions and wanted to help your fellow man.
No, basic Christian decency demands nothing of the sort.
Basic Christian decency states that the death of Trayvon Martin is a tragedy, period, full stop.
Basic common sense says that following a kid through your neighborhood with a gun is also probably a bad thing.
You've put a great deal onto me from the three sentences I wrote here, and you're telling me to judge not? Basic Christian decency says: you're a hypocrite. But nothing new there from you, eh?
Maybe the prosecution over-prosecuted. Maybe justice was done. But it is the self-righteous idiots like yourself, who fail to see that a CHILD WAS KILLED BY AN IDIOT WITH A GUN AND THIS IS A BAD THING who make the story of the Good Samaritan so hard to preach today.
So judge me, while you talk about judging not. You're like the teacher of the law the parable talks about, who tries to determine who he is supposed to love, when the lesson is to love all people regardless of race.
Keep defending the oppressors, keep saying its okay to kill if someone might be dangerous, sorta maybe. You will face justice one day. God will probably forgive you, too. But right now, I have a great deal of trouble seeing why.
