Trip to a War Zone

So today my friend David showed back up after an absence of several weeks. I had seen him in jail sometime in early November, but he'd been nowhere to be found since his release on the 6th despite his repeated promises to come to church every Sunday.

But today he came banging on my door and telling me that he had relapsed. He wasn't too repentant about it though because, in his words, "you'da relapsed too, pastor, if you'd seen what I seen last night." So I asked him about it and I managed to piece together his story:

After a quiet evening at his aunt's house where David is living until he can get a place of his own, his 24-year old nephew showed up at the house needing a place to stay for the night. It being below freezing, they let him inside where a hodgepodge of family members were staying -- an old matriarch, a young single mother and her 7 month old son, David who was recently released from prison, and now this 24-year old kid up to no good.

Around 2:00 am they all awoke with a start as several men jumped out of a van, ran onto their front porch and started riddling the house with gunfire. The men were apparently carrying assault rifles and unloaded on the sleepy house, shooting out windows and sending bullets flying in all directions through walls before piling back into the van and peeling out to go who knows where. Turns out the nephew who was visiting had been looking for a place to hide from some men who were out to get him. He'd apparently sold them some bad drugs or something. When the grandmother of them all called the police, David's nephew grabbed his coat and took off.

A bullet had missed the young mother's head by a few feet as she slept next to her beautiful baby boy. David took off to "get a drink." No one slept the rest of the night.

So this morning, David comes and asks me if I want an education. He offers to take me to his place and show me the "real inner city." So I went. The whole way he kept saying, "If I see those bastards again I'll blow their heads off. I gotta protect that little baby. I'm gonna stay up all night with my rifle at my side. You ain't gonna believe your eyes, pastor. These bastards coulda killed that little baby." When he asked me if I would defend my own home with a rifle after such an incident, I thought for a second and nodded my head.

The home was a total dump. A fat, elderly black women greeted me at the door in her bathrobe. "Days of Our Lives" played in the background and the air hung heavy with the stench of tobacco and alcohol as I got a tour of the various bullet holes in the walls. The young woman had made a home for herself and her baby by throwing an old, filthy mattress on the floor. No sheets. Just a couple crumpled blankets used for a pillow, a 1980's style telephone, a radio, and random piles of mail mixed with McDonald's wrappers. She sat up when I came in, but never got up and I smiled and played with her beautiful baby boy as everyone around talked about how close they came to getting shot.

I got my education today. I never learned this in seminary. I visited a war zone. I learned about how the police don't care about neighborhoods like David's. I learned about the demonic oppression that hangs in the air over a home stricken by poverty. I learned about systemic racism by going to this black home in a black neighborhood. I learned what an assault rifle bullet hole looks like when it goes through glass, drywall, and cement. I (only slightly) learned about what it must be like to be a baby that grows up with a bottle that hasn't been washed in two weeks. I learned why David went out for a drink.

David swore that even I would go grab a beer after seeing what he wanted to show me. Well, I didn't do that. But I did stop by a Starbucks, order a coffee, and sit down over the newspaper. Same difference.