The Trayvon Martin case and the lynch mob

COMMENTARY
From the Rev. Jim Wilson, author and president of PrayNorthState:

Trayvon Martin should not have died. No seventeen-year-old should die - whatever the circumstances. No parent should have to live through the death of a child - whomever may be at fault and however many faults there may be. I know because I have. Nothing will ever make it okay before hell freezes over. But a question remains to be answered, and the answer determines whether we make it worse than it already is or whether we make it less likely to happen again on our watch. The question is, "What do we - as a culture - what do we - as the gaggle of parents and children that we are - learn from this tragedy of Trayvon Martin so we don't have to repeat it?"

As a culture we yearn for justice and we are ready to sacrifice to achieve it - as we should be. But there are many in our culture whose yearning trumps their reasoning capacity and - at their worst - they become willing to substitute what feels like justice for the reality. Such people will always know that OJ did it, for example. The fact that police planted evidence - they too "knew" that OJ did it - and forever contaminated access to the truth - does not sway them. They know that they know. We can thank God that we have a system that requires absolute proof. When the evidence is fatally tainted we would rather risk letting a guilty party go free than the condemnation of the innocent. We will likely never know whether OJ did it; under our system that means not guilty. Those who know that they know need to let it go if we would live together in the freedom of reason rather than the slavery of impulse gone wild which is properly called lynch law.

Read more on his blog at Redding.com.