Do your eyes lie or is it your mind struggling to erase what your eyes have seen? If you never saw the videos of Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s deaths, you could just accept the news that they were provocateurs and deserved to be shot. You could choose to believe what you hear. The operative word here is choose, but your mind can’t erase what your eyes saw, you don’t have a choice to unsee what you saw! That is a hard mental disconnect!

Our pledge of allegiance says, “we believe in one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Justice begins with us and how we treat people or demonize them without due process. The concepts that we are innocent until proven guilty, and that no one is above the law, are the foundations of our democracy and society. Not too far off from love your neighbor as yourself and treat others as you want to be treated. These are the major tenants and laws of a Christian society.

We all need to step back and recognize the evil that is before us. There were over 400 mass shootings last year. A mass shooting is defined as 4 or more people being shot. We want a safe America, but we are blaming the wrong people.

Jesus said, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in. Matthew 25:35 Being an illegal alien is not a crime; it is a misdemeanor akin to a traffic ticket. We should not be demonizing our neighbor or the stranger that is within our gates! That is what the Germans did to the Jews in WWII.

“If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you.” Leviticus 25:35

All people in the US are entitled to due process; you are innocent till proven guilty and then punished fairly by a court of law. The same holds true for illegal aliens, they need to be processed, documented and released until proven guilty. If we would have spent $85 billion dollars on judges and lawyers, then all the illegal immigrants could have had due process to be accepted, and we would not be in the mess we are now in. What we have now is a criminal justice system that is prejudiced against illegal aliens, using racist ideology to implement a new form of justice. This is not the American way nor the way of Christ if we are to be a Christian nation. The world is watching us, just like we watched the videos of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Let’s hope we get our morals straightened out so our minds do not become disconnected from the truth.

Edward Vos is a Jamestown resident.