In a world of viral social media posts and sensational headlines, we often hear stories when someone is killed. These stories gain the most traction if there is an unequal power dynamic between the suspect and the victim, such as a police officer killing a citizen or a parent killing a child, or some other unique social relationship such as a teen killing another teen or someone of one skin color killing someone of another skin color.

In light of the recent death of Austin Metcalf, a white teen boy who was killed by a black teen boy at a track meet, I began to ponder the way our media handles these stories and how we have been conditioned to respond. I think we all know how we would be asked to respond if a white boy had killed a black boy at a track meet. Before the police could even start the investigation, a hashtag would be circulating, social media tributes would abound, and protests (and perhaps riots) would be breaking out in major cities.

But when a white boy dies, things stay relatively quiet. I saw the story pop up on a few conservative feeds. Now it’s been 12 days since the event, and the only major newspaper that seems to be covering the story as it unfolds is the New York Post. (In fact, a search for Austin Metcalf’s name currently reveals zero results on the New York Times website.) I asked ChatGPT to give me ten headlines from “major” US news outlets about the story, and some of the sources it gave me were The Times of India and Wide Open Country, a country music news webpage. I wouldn’t say the story is going viral…

Ten years ago, I believed the race-bait headlines. I had read Just Mercy and heard Beth Moore Twitter-preach to me about injustice. It must be true that black men were being targeted in the streets due to centuries of discrimination in our country.

But then the Holy Spirit opened my eyes. I began to notice that when Christians would harp on social justice, their messages never included the gospel. The perfect work of Jesus Christ didn’t seem to be enough to atone for “implicit bias.” I began to ignore the headlines and look at real data about crime and race… and the numbers are not what the cable news companies and social justice activists would have you believe.

But we have little power to decide which killings are sensationalized in the news and which are ignored. Rather, Christians should develop a biblical response any time someone is killed by another human, whether the killing was justified or not. As I’ve pondered this topic for the past few years, I’ve come up with three Bible verses that guide my head and my heart when someone is killed.

God does not delight in death.

Ezekiel 18:32 says: “For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD; so turn, and live.”

Anytime someone is killed, even if it is a just death as a result of war, execution, or self-defense, we should not delight in it. We don’t think of death in a light-hearted way, and we don’t jump to exploit it for personal or political gain. We also don’t dismiss it or ignore it callously. When an image-bearer of God dies, it is worthy of lament, even if it’s just a brief moment of somberness as you read a news article. This doesn’t mean we’ll be able to keep up with every killing in America, or that we’ll have the attention or capacity to follow every news story or attend every protest. It just means we don’t gloat over someone’s death or ignore it as the person’s life didn’t matter.

Partiality is a sin.

Proverbs 23:20 says: “Unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord, and false scales are not good.”

When we treat the killing of a black person as more sad or more unjust than the killing of a white person, especially when we don’t know the facts of the incident, we are responding with partiality. We have been conditioned by our media to lament black death (but only when a black person is killed by a white person, never mind the black on black violence that takes place all over our country daily), while we ignore or excuse the death of white people at the hands of black people. Part of this is because the media amplifies stories such as the killing of George Floyd, while it obscures stories such as the Austin Metcalf murder. But this also happens because our sinful hearts long for the approval of man. If we can join in the cries of the masses and get a virtual pat on the back for using viral hashtags… #justiceforahmaud, #justiceforbreonna #blackouttuesday… we will gladly participate in this collective partiality. The Bible is clear in its condemnation of these practices. Heed the words of James: "But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors,” or the law in Leviticus: “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” If we establish our measure of justice based on skin color, affluence, poverty, or gender, we are in sin, regardless of the crimes being committed by anyone else.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (even on social media).

Exodus 20:16 states: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

This is the ninth of the Ten Commandments. Many people summarize this command as “Don’t lie,” but it means more than that. We shall not pass on false (or unproven) narratives about our neighbors, even when stories are circulating on social media. When someone kills someone else, we rarely know the facts right away, much less the motive. So if you jumped on the bandwagon to insinuate that Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd as an act of white supremacy before you had any details about the incident and knew nothing about what prompted the confrontation, then you were in sin to perpetuate speculation and accusations about your neighbors. Most people have still never read the facts about the George Floyd incident, despite the black squares that linger on their Instagram profiles from the year 2020.

This doesn’t mean that some crimes aren’t racially motivated. Or that police officers always behave ethically. Or that the courts get every conviction right. But as Christians, we must do our part not to advance falsehoods and not to jump to conclusions. We are not to bear false witness; it’s so important to God that he included it in the Ten Commandments.

So what do we do when a killing goes viral? Or when it doesn’t?

We should pray for the family and friends who lost a loved one. We should pray for justice if it turns out to be a wrongful death. We should pray for due process and impartiality in our courts. We should speak the facts as they are revealed, especially if others are perpetuating lies.

We should not scoff at death. We should not weigh with dishonest scales. We should not peddle gossip and rumors.

We rejoice in life. We desire blind justice. We seek the truth because we follow Jesus, the author of all truth.