Death and destruction followed the death of young Sylville Smith when he pointed a gun at a police officer who then defended his life by shooting Smith. Soon, riots broke out as many people took advantage of the situation by looting and burning local businesses to the ground.
Now, Sylville Smith’s father Patrick is speaking out and challenging parents to step up and raise their children better and start out by being good role models.
“I had to blame myself for a lot of things too, because your hero is your dad, and I played a very big part in my family’s role model for them,” Patrick Smith told WITI-TV. “Being on the street, doing things of the street life: entertaining, drug dealing and pimping, and they’re looking at their dad like, ‘He’s doing all these things.’”
“When they see the wrong role model, this is what you get,” he said. “I’ve gotta start with my kids, and we gotta change our ways, to be better role models. And we gotta change ourselves. We’ve gotta talk to them, put some sense into them.”
Patrick Smith has discovered the core of the problem we face in America, sin. He may not have called it sin, but sin is what is killing our children of all colors. While there are still problems among people of various ethnicities it is the choices we make and teach our children to make that defines them and us.
Children are not responsible for their parent’s choices but they do learn from them and that is how we raise up our children.
Is there injustice on this earth and is life unfair, you better believe it and at times it is worse for one people group than it is for another but that doesn’t excuse whole families choosing crime.
We can all do better as parents, we can choose to learn the ways of the Lord that lead to life and then teach it to our children. We can choose to longer enable the evil that young people might embrace, telling our kids we will always love them but we support the punishment the receive for the bad choices they make.
The destruction we seen in Milwaukee is the result of people standing with evil acts instead of opposing them. It did not matter that the police officer and the criminal were of the same race, the mob just wanted to destroy the city. They follow the example of their father the devil, they only desire to steal, kill and destroy.
As the city of Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin work to restore order and determine how to prevent this from happening again, we must recognize that Patrick Smith saw the answer clearly, maybe for the first time in his life, we must repent and change our ways and then teach the new ways to our children.
Actually, let me correct that, we need to teach the old ways to our children, the ways of truth and life, the ways of the Lord.
Because this is not just a Milwaukee problem it is a problem America faces and that New Mexico faces as police officers now fear for their lives like never before and that makes more difficult for them to show restraint. Police are not looking to take lives but they want to go home to their families.
Parents talk to your children and tell them to live better lives, to respect authority and to obey the law or we will only see more death and more destruction.
