The video is hard to watch. Two elderly men attacked by a then 26-year-old man without provocation outside a Maryland Planned Parenthood. Richard Schaefer, 84 years old, tackled into the ground, while 73-year-old Mark Crosby was knocked to the concrete and kicked in the face.
The picture is harder to see. Crosby's wounds resulted in a 3-day stay at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, along with 2 additional trips to the emergency room. Besides the orbital fracture, his right eye was permanently damaged as a result of his attacker's fury.
The offender's light sentence is the hardest to see. Baltimore Circuit Judge Yvette M. Bryant handed down an insultingly soft sentence to Patrick Brice assigning him to a year of home detention and another 3 years' probation.
Gasps in the courtroom following Bryant's decree were drowned out by the shouts of Crosby's angry voice, breaking with emotion: "What about my rights and well-being?" he asked the judge as she stepped down from the bench.
What's most shocking about this miscarriage of justice perhaps is the fact that it is anything but shocking. This wasn't a failure of the legal system nearly as much as it was a snapshot of a culture that increasingly tolerates violence against those who dare to live out biblical convictions in public. Especially those who stand for the sanctity of human life.
On the one hand, Christians like Crosby and Schaefer know this is what they were told to expect. Jesus warned believers in John 15 that the world would hate those who follow Him, and if standing outside a grisly mill designed to dismember tiny image-bearers of the Creator, silently praying for mercy to be shown to them isn't following Jesus, I don't know what is. They know, like all of us know, that things that used to be common ground - the right of peaceful protest, protecting defenseless children and vulnerable elderly - have now become politicized, polarized, and weaponized.
And that's what leaves many Christians wondering the best course of action moving forward. Romans 13 speaks of civil authorities as "an agent of terror" against those who harm others. Government, properly ordered to defend the life, liberty, and property of man, is unquestionably "God's servant for our good."
But what happens when situations like this arise? What happens when justice is mocked in open court? What message does it send when elderly men are assaulted on camera for their beliefs, suffer permanent damage, and then are forced to watch as their attacker is permitted to walk free?
That these men were attacked for defending the unborn, and then received no real justice for their own injuries, should outrage every citizen with a moral conscience. And it should cause us to look to the future with trepidation. After all, the writer of Ecclesiastes warns, "Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil."
In other words: Soft justice encourages more violence.
So yes, the hostility of both lawless men and mindless judges is real. But so is the earthly calling of a Christian soul that fears neither of those two things.
Just ask Richard Schaefer, who testified that regardless of the outcome of the case, he would return to the sidewalk to speak the truth in love and to give voice to the voiceless.
That's the kind of faith we need — humble, unshaken, and obedient to God rather than men.
What motivates it? The abiding knowledge that though this world may fail to deliver justice, God never does. His assurance in Romans 12 that vengeance belongs to Him is not a threat, but rather a promise of final righteousness.
Until then, may God's people not grow weary in doing good, but instead keep standing firm. Not in anger, but in truth. Not with hatred, but with courage.
And not because the world approves, but because Christ commands it.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
