Your Law Is Within My Heart

Then I said, “Here I am;
    in the scroll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do your will, O my God;
    your law is within my heart.”
I have told the glad news of deliverance
    in the great congregation;
see, I have not restrained my lips,
    as you know, O Lord.
I have not hidden your saving help within my heart;
    I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;
I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness
    from the great congregation.
(Psalm 40:7-10)

It can feel difficult to speak of the glad news of deliverance these days. 

On January 7, an agent of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau shot and killed Renee Nicole Good as she attempted to leave the scene of an ICE operation in Minneapolis—where, according to local officials, she had been acting as a volunteer legal observer.

Eyewitnesses say that ICE agents prevented a physician present at the scene from offering immediate medical assistance, and further blocked an emergency response team from getting to Good when they arrived 15 minutes later. They may not have been able to offer much help, in any event; one does not often survive multiple gunshot wounds to the head at close range.

The U.S. government has attempted to brand Good as a “domestic terrorist.” People closer to Good described her as a friendly neighbor, an award-winning poet, and an “extremely compassionate” woman. Her wife, Becca Good, told Minnesota Public Radio that “Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.”

In these messages, I frequently return to the two greatest commands God has given us: to love God, and to love your neighbor as yourself (see Mark 12:29-31). Those who knew her best say Good lived by those values, that her celebration of God’s faithfulness and steadfast love for the world shone through her actions daily.

Renee Nicole Good, it seems plain, carried God’s law within her heart.

I believe, however, that the man who killed her carried a different law within his heart, as does the government that has sought relentlessly, from the moment of her death, to make her the villain of their story.

I’ve written before about the nature of “Empire,” the social structures enforced by people who claim wealth and power and glory for themselves. God promises enough for everybody; Empire sees a world of have and have-nots. God tells us to love the stranger, offering aid and comfort to all, no matter their status; Empire offers us a spot on the winning team if we collaborate in excluding and eliminating those it deems unwelcome or undesirable. God assures us of the blissful joy of the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers; Empire insists that might makes right, encouraging us to seize what we want by force.

I don’t consider it any great revelation to tell you that we live in a world whose leaders have given themselves over to the spirit of Empire, and that those leaders have seduced millions into serving their interests by claiming they can make things “great again.” Some might consider it off-putting to put the matter so starkly; others would recognize the necessity in speaking plainly. But we can’t just speak plainly of evil, where it has taken root—we must also speak of the blessed community that remains accessible to us if we turn away from Empire and embrace God’s covenant.

How do we find the strength to do so in the face of tragedy?

I found myself drawn to a short speech by the Chicago-based activist and organizer Kelly Hayes at a vigil just hours after Good’s death. “There is power in grief,” she told the quickly gathered crowd, “because grief draws us together in moments when our enemies would tear us apart.” 

“Even though we know ICE has killed before—and will again… their brutality has not hardened or corrupted us. We are still shaken and heartbroken by their violence. That is the cost of staying human in inhuman times—and it’s a cost we pay in defense of our neighbors and in defense of our own humanity. We feel what they would have us ignore, and we grieve the violence that their cultish followers applaud.”

“They want us to scatter in fear, to give up hope, and to give up on each other,” Hayes continued. “But we will hold more tightly to one another, plan more strategically, and care even more deeply.” This must hold true for those who have come together as Friends as well, whether or not we believe in exactly the same God of whom the psalmist spoke.

We form a Religious Society not merely out of practicality, but from a shared sense of purpose, divinely ordained. We carry God’s law within our hearts because we recognize the truth in what it speaks to our condition. And we delight to do God’s will not because it will bring us great reward, but because we believe, as Becca Good tells us her wife believed, “there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow.”