This short piece isn’t a debate on the validity of calling crime in the Black community ‘Black on Black crime’.

It’s simply coming from a Black man with a wife, a daughter, two sons and a granddaughter.

Every time I hear a headline about someone who looks like me senselessly killing someone else who looks like me, it pisses me off!

Does poverty breed violence? Yes.

Are there some residual affects of decades of institutional racism that contributes to violence? Yes.

No matter what’s going on externally, it’s time for an INTERNAL SPIRITUAL and CULTURAL REVOLUTION!

There is absolutely no excuse. Every culture has to address its internal threats as well as external. While some communities must face their own pride and arrogance, others must address the violence within their subcultures.

God demands excellence from all of His children no matter what situation they are in. Look at what He told Israel and Judah when they were exiled in Babylon…

Jeremiah 29:4-14 (NKJV)

⁴Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away captive, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon:

⁵Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. ⁶Take wives and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters—that you may be increased there, and not diminished. ⁷And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace. ⁸For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are in your midst deceive you, nor listen to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed. ⁹For they prophesy falsely to you in My name; I have not sent them, says the Lord.

¹⁰For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. ¹¹For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. ¹²Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. ¹³And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. ¹⁴I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.

They were exiles in a foreign land who had lost their freedom. But, God still expected them to thrive and live up to His standards. He expected them to pray for the peace of the city in which they lived, not contribute to it’s destruction.