“Whose Hands?”

Responsibility, Repentance, and the Limits of Political Blame

AUTHOR’s NOTE:  I did not participate in the 2024 presidential election. Many friends speak of voting for the lesser of two evils. I chose not to vote for what I understood to be evil at all. My decision flows from an imperfect but sincere commitment to practice the way of Jesus—not as a future hope alone, but as a present way of life meant to shape the world here and now. I believe faithfulness to Jesus carries real consequences for how we live together, especially in moments of grief, injustice, and fear. Even in tragic circumstances, I continue to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”—not as a retreat from responsibility, but as a longing for God’s justice, mercy, and peace to take concrete form among us.

There’s a phrase moving through our cultural bloodstream right now—sharp, accusatory, and meant to land like a verdict:

“_____’s blood is on your hands.”

It shows up after tragedies. It shows up after elections. It appears whenever grief meets rage and needs a target.

Several spiritual leaders, people I deeply respect, have used this language on social media. While such statements can sound morally serious or prophetic, they function as false accusation. They do real harm.

Careless accusation distorts accountability. This kind of language flattens moral responsibility, short-circuits truth, and quietly trains us to think like mobs instead of neighbors.

The death of Renee Good in Minnesota is tragic. A human life was lost. That should never be minimized, spiritualized away, or absorbed into the churn of the news cycle.

But how we talk about responsibility mat

ters almost as much as whether we talk about it at all.

This piece is an attempt to wrestle—not to posture, not to win—but to tell the truth carefully, as people who believe Jesus means what he says about truth, justice, repentance, and love of neighbor.

Irresponsible Power

What has been most disturbing in recent days is not only the tragedy itself, but the speed with which it was narrated.

In the public responses from leaders like Kristi Noem and Donald Trump, there was little recognition of the loss of life itself. No pause. No lament. No acknowledgment that a human being died in a moment that should never have ended that way.

Instead, the story moved immediately to justification.

National framing replaced local grief. Policy language replaced human language. Narrative control replaced moral clarity.

That matters.

In any society that claims to value human life, the proper order is not complicated:

First, you grieve. Then, you investigate. Only then do you explain.

When leaders reverse that order, when explanation rushes ahead of sorrow, it does something corrosive to the public soul. It teaches us, subtly, that outcomes matter more than lives, and that if a death can be folded into a larger story, it no longer needs to be held with care.

This is not about whether borders should exist, laws should be enforced, or elections should be won. Those are legitimate debates. But they cannot come at the cost of moral reflex.

A life was lost.

That fact alone should have slowed the words of anyone entrusted with power.

Instead, the moment was absorbed into a national script designed to reassure supporters, deflect scrutiny, and justify tragic outcomes as necessary or inevitable. That is not leadership. It is narrative management. And narrative management in the face of death is a failure of conscience.

Irresponsibility does not belong to one political party, nor does it always sound the same.

If some leaders responded to tragedy with spin that justified outcomes too quickly, others responded with threat language that sounded forceful but carried little substance.

Public statements from Tim Walz and Jacob Frey projected resolve and moral certainty, but offered few concrete paths toward actual accountability.

Strong words were plentiful.

Clear actions were not.

Threat language functions differently than narrative spin, but it produces a similar effect. It reassures supporters, signals alignment with public outrage, and creates the impression that justice is imminent—without naming timelines, processes, or consequences. It sounds powerful, but it has no teeth.

This too is a failure of responsibility.

When leaders speak as though accountability is assured while avoiding the hard work of defining what accountability actually looks like, they trade substance for symbolism. The public is left with heightened expectations and no clear mechanism for resolution. Anger remains, trust erodes further, and backlash grows louder.

Once again, leadership models the very behavior it claims to resist.

Words without action teach citizens that outrage is the point, not reform. Threats without follow-through train the public to escalate rather than to engage. And when those threats inevitably fail to deliver, cynicism deepens.

To say all of this is not to accuse every voter, every supporter, or every citizen of guilt. It is to insist that leaders—especially leaders—carry a higher responsibility in how they speak when life is lost.

If public officials cannot name tragedy as tragedy before turning it into argument, then they are no longer serving the common good. They are serving a story.

How a Citizen Should Respond When Accusation Replaces Responsibility

1. A Responsible Citizen Refuses False Blame. There is a phrase moving through our public life right now—sharp, ancient, and dangerous:

“_____’s blood is on your hands.” In this case, it is Renee Good’s blood. Tomorrow it will be someone or something different, but the accusation will be the same.

A responsible citizen pauses before accusing.

Biblically, this language is not casual. To say someone has “blood on their hands” is to claim direct moral culpability—not vague influence or abstract association, but responsibility close enough to bear weight.

In Scripture, bloodguilt is assigned when:

• Someone commits violence

• Someone commands violence

• Someone knowingly enables violence

• Someone refuses to intervene when intervention is clearly theirs to make

What’s striking is how specific this accountability is. Responsibility is not infinitely transferable. It does not leap across time, intention, or proximity without care.

Modern political discourse ignores this restraint entirely. Today, we often assume:

• Voting equals moral authorship of all future outcomes

• Silence equals endorsement

• Complexity equals complicity

That is not justice. It is scapegoating.

A responsible citizen resists scapegoating—not because accountability doesn’t matter, but because scapegoating is a shortcut for societies that want moral clarity without moral rigor.

2. A Responsible Citizen Insists on Truth Before Theater. Some things must be said plainly:

Renee Good should not have been shot. That truth stands on its own.

If an officer unholstered a weapon when protocol did not warrant it, accountability belongs there—precisely there. Camera angles belong to the investigation as evidence, not the public rhetoric of justification.

Real justice always moves downward into particulars, not upward into abstractions.

A responsible citizen understands what accountability looks like:

• Clear investigation

• Transparent review of protocol

• Consequences proportionate to action

• Structural reform where systems incentivize poor decisions

And also what it does not look like:

• Retroactively assigning blame to millions of voters

• Declaring bloodguilt by association

• Turning tragedy into rhetorical ammunition

When grief is weaponized, it stops being grief. It becomes propaganda. And propaganda always needs enemies more than it needs truth.

3. A Responsible Citizen Rejects Threat-Based Morality. Another phrase circulating widely—“You reap what you sow”—sounds biblical, but functions very differently in modern discourse.

In Scripture, sowing and reaping:

• Is personal before it is political

• Is long-term, not reactive

• Is aimed at repentance, not threat

• Is governed by God, not crowds

Today, the phrase often functions less like wisdom and more like intimidation: “This is what you deserve.”

That is not accountability. It is moral coercion.

A responsible citizen recognizes that what we are experiencing did not begin in 2024—and will not be healed by punishing a single voting bloc. We are reaping seeds sown over decades:

• Fear-driven politics

• Media systems that reward outrage

• Dehumanizing language from all sides

• Long histories of unresolved injustice

• A culture that prizes power over wisdom

Reducing all of this to “you voted wrong” is not prophetic. It is lazy.

4. A Responsible Christian Begins With Repentance. Here Christians must speak honestly.

If we claim to follow Jesus, our first allegiance is not to a party, platform, or personality—but to the well-being of the polis, the shared life of our neighbors.

If we claim to follow Jesus, our first allegiance is not to a party, platform, or personality—but to the well-being of the polis, the shared life of our neighbors.

This is not a new idea. Long before modern nation-states or political parties existed, the prophet Jeremiah wrote to a displaced, divided, and anxious people living under foreign rule:

“Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7)

Jeremiah did not call God’s people to seize power, control narratives, or demonize their neighbors. He called them to seek the good of the place they lived, even when that place was imperfect, unjust, or ruled by others. Their faithfulness was measured not by dominance, but by contribution. Not by outrage, but by presence.

To seek the welfare of the city is to care about how words land, how power is exercised, and how truth is spoken—especially in moments of loss. It is to resist rhetoric that fractures the civic fabric, even when that rhetoric flatters our side. It is to choose responsibility over accusation, and repentance over reaction.

Jeremiah’s vision assumes something essential: The health of our neighbors is bound up with our own.

When the polis suffers, everyone suffers. That remains true today. And many believers—across the spectrum—have failed here.

We have:

• Confused winning with faithfulness

• Baptized political anger as righteousness

• Excused cruelty because “our side” was doing it

• Reduced human beings to symbols

• Treated power as proof of God’s favor

That deserves repentance. Not performative apology. Not partisan rebranding. But real repentance—a turning away from fear-based allegiance and toward cruciform love.

Jesus did not die to secure political dominance. He died to reconcile enemies, expose violence, and create a new kind of people.

If Christians want moral authority in public life again, it will not come from louder arguments. It will come from visible humility, truth-telling, and costly love.

5. A Responsible Citizen Living Outside of Christ Still Knows This Much. A responsible citizen—religious or not—can still affirm a few essential principles:

• Distinguish responsibility from association. Justice depends on locating responsibility where decisions are actually made.

• Refuse collective guilt. History shows that collective guilt leads not to healing, but to cycles of punishment and backlash.

• Insist on procedural accountability. Investigations, protocols, and consequences matter more than slogans.

• Hold grief without weaponizing it. Grief deserves space, not scripts.

• Protect the shared civic fabric. When accusation replaces dialogue, the polis fractures—and everyone loses.

You don’t need Jesus to know that a society built on perpetual blame cannot survive. You just need history.

Choosing Responsibility Over Accusation

The deepest danger of “blood on your hands” rhetoric is that it trains us to believe someone else must always carry the guilt, so we don’t have to carry responsibility. But responsibility is not a weapon. It is a burden meant to be handled carefully.

Christians carry it under the cross. Secular citizens carry it under shared laws and shared humanity.

Either way, the aim is the same:

• Less violence, not more blame

• More truth, not louder opinion

• Accountability that heals, not accusations that harden

If we cannot speak this way—slowly, carefully, truthfully—then we are not serious about justice.

And if the Church cannot model this way of speaking, then it has forgotten the One it claims to follow.