George Floyd and The Ultimate Concern

The theologian Paul Tillich wrote about understanding God in the context of maximal greatness, he called this “The Ultimate Concern.” Thus, Tillich says faith (in God) is “the state of being ultimately concerned.” My words here are not meant to be a religious treatise, rather a practical application of Tillich’s principles. Admittedly, I am coopting Tillich to try to describe the confusion, anger, and sense of hopelessness I feel caused by viruses both scientific and societal impacting our world today. And, to be clear, I admittedly am practicing eisegeses–the process of interpreting a text in such a way as to support my own presuppositions and biases. So here it is…

Ancillary to Tillich’s dictum on the ultimate concern is his theory of preliminary concerns. In Tillich’s terms, preliminary concerns have finitude. So, whereas the ultimate concern expressed as God has no limit, preliminary concerns have limits. Preliminary concerns can be, and often are important to us. Things like our personal possessions are all preliminary concerns. Political values we hold sacrosanct are preliminary concerns. Therefore, wealth accumulation, house, car, food, political values, etc., all may be important to us, but they are not the ultimate concern, rather they are preliminary concerns. However, according to Tillich, “The elevation of a preliminary concern to a position of ultimacy is idolatry since it occurs when “something essentially conditioned is taken as unconditional, something essentially partial is boosted into universality, and something essentially finite is given infinite significance”

Let me speak plainly now. We are living in a state of idolatry where we worship and elevate our preliminary concerns as being ultimate…all of them. In my terms, not Tillich’s, the ultimate concern is humanity, more specifically our common humanity as expressed as an image of God. COVID-19 only exposed the degree to which our preliminary concerns have become idolatrous. The murder of George Floyd in public, in real-time, laid it bare. All of us have lived with the Coronavirus pandemic for a couple of months. People of color have lived with the pandemic of racism for 500 years.

The recent and unfortunate intersection of these two viruses became clear early on in the lifecycle of the virus as reported cases and death due to COVID-19 disproportionally impacted people of color and poor communities. For instance, back in April NPR reported, “In Chicago, 70% of COVID-19 Deaths Are Black.” That, once again, black people must endure death disproportionately to their numbers in societal maladies is nothing new. Also, nothing new is the racist narratives to explain and justify these grim statistics. This is why the death of George Floyd is different…this time. That, once again, a person of color was killed by an authority of the state is nothing new:  Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Trayvon Martin. Sandra Bland. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. This is only the list of names you may recognize. And, this is only recent.

The sanctioned killing of black people is endemic to America. According to the UKMC School of Law, between 1882 and 1968, 3446 black persons were lynched in the United States. And, according to the NAACP, “Most of the lynchings that took place happened in the South.  A big reason for this was the end of the Civil War. Once blacks were given their freedom, many people felt that the freed blacks were getting away with too much freedom and felt they needed to be controlled.”

“Control” is the essence of what COVID-19 and George Floyd have revealed about us as a nation. Many fear the unsettling loss of control over preliminary concerns that have become the altar of American exceptionalism. When we have replaced the ultimate concern of our common humanity with the preliminary concerns of short term efficiency and growth, the result is economic, social, and political marginalization of an entire demographic, in particular, people of color.

New York Times editorialist Thomas L. Friedman put it this way, “And we’re the ones who made it that way with our own hands. Just look around. Over the past 20 years, we’ve been steadily removing man-made and natural buffers, redundancies, regulations, and norms that provide resilience and protection when big systems — be they ecological, geopolitical, or financial — get stressed. We’ve been recklessly removing these buffers out of an obsession with short-term efficiency and growth, or without thinking at all.”

This is why George Floyd’s death is a game-changer. This is why it is different this time. We are thinking…now. We watched for 8 minutes and 46 excruciating seconds as a white police officer knelt on the neck of George Floyd. We heard, ”I can’t breathe.” We heard, “please, please, please.” Then, we saw a lifeless body and then we heard nothing.

Somewhere in our deep conscience, it didn’t square that Dylan Roof was arrested without incident after gunning down 9 black people in a church in Charleston, while George Floyd was murdered for passing a counterfeit $20 bill in Minneapolis. The ontological wrestling match this has created for many is, “My God, what have we become?” Simply said, George Floyd’s death revealed the erosion of our common humanity. That was the consequence of his last breath.

Nonetheless, it is equally clear that a great many Americans including dear friends and family members don’t see the response to either virus as a game-changer or an opportunity for healing and conversation, Far from it. The vitriol is not hard to find. Look at the comments in the live streaming news coverage of peaceful protests that use all the tried and true narratives—“Get a job…What about black on black crime…Obey the law and this wouldn’t happen.” And those are the ones fit for print. Look at the comments of your friends on Facebook who have said FU if you don’t like what I have to say…”Unfriend me then.”

However, I believe what we are seeing in response to George Floyd’s death, particularly among previously ambivalent white people, is a reevaluation about the ultimate concern. Baby steps toddling forward towards compassion and a willingness to listen and learn. That is why when we scrolled through our Instagram feeds Tuesday and saw blackened pages by individuals, groups, and institutions, some of which (many of which) were surprising to us. Many who had previously been afraid of offending friends, or turning away business, or alienating constituencies have finally said, enough is enough, I want to be part of the solution, not the problem. Perhaps this sentiment is best summed up by the musician Jason Isbell who said in a tweet, “You’re gonna lose some of your audience!” Maybe so, but I get to keep ALL of my SOUL.”