Violence From Those We Trust

At 10 p.m. one February evening in 1991, Basil Marin was driving home on the freeway - returning from an immigration meeting that had run late. The routine trip turned suddenly tragic when Marin saw headlights in the distance. A car, speeding in the wrong direction, was headed straight for him.

With barely enough time to understand what was happening, much less act, Marin found himself engulfed in the shriek of tires and grinding metal. "Before I knew it, my face was bleeding, my body was in shock and I was praying, 'Lord don't let me pass out, give me strength.'"

Struggling to stay conscious, Marin assessed his injuries: a broken nose and several cuts on his face, a shattered knee, and heavy chest bruising from an impact so violent it bent the steering wheel of his car. Within a few moments, he saw another light ahead - this time from the flashlight of a police officer. What the Los Angeles pastor was about to experience was far from the help you would expect from a public servant, but not at all surprising to many African-Americans.

As the policeman walked up to the car and pointed his flashlight at Marin, a second officer approached from the opposite side, put his gun to the pastor's head, and told him that if he didn't raise his hands he would be killed. Marin struggled against the severe pain in his chest and mustered what strength he had left to lift his hands. "I know … from watching the news and being around certain incidents, if I did not obey the police I would be dead today. I believe that with all my heart."

The officers then attempted to tug Marin out of the car while his seatbelt was still fastened. After unfastening the belt, they pulled him out of the wreck, putting his hands behind his back and handcuffing him. Barely able to stand on one leg, Marin was pummeled with questions. Why was he running from the police? He wasn't running, he said, and tried to explain who he was. They told him to lie down, which was impossible because of his injuries, so he fell to the ground.

Officers continued to ask Marin the same question. "I am Pastor Basil Marin," he kept telling them, "I just came from a meeting on immigration." After a search of the car, they found the pastor's large black Bible with his name on the front, and someone took the handcuffs off him. Soon after, the fire department arrived. They cut off his clothing, leaving him bleeding and bruised, wearing nothing but his underwear.

It was at this point, Marin would later discover, that a woman in a prayer meeting had a vision of a bleeding and bruised man, nearly naked, but his head was being anointed. She didn't yet realize who the man was, though, and kept praying. "Those prayers," believes Marin, "made a difference."

Marin would spend the next six days in the hospital, but the pain was not over. "The first few days were horrible, very difficult," he said. When his wife arrived the next morning to see him, Marin lay in a bed, wearing the same pair of underwear, covered with only a sheet. He was still dirty and bloody from the night before; the hospital staff had not even washed his face.

As he began to recover, the pastor spent time in prayer. He was angry. He began questioning God, asking why such a thing could happen. "I prayed 'Why? Why me, Lord?'"

During this time, Marin said, God revealed to him that he had been spared. He could have been killed, but his wife and children needed him. "From that point on there was no bitterness, no anger in my heart. Not against the police or anybody."

"My sister said to me, 'How about your heart? Are you angry? Are you bitter?'" Marin wasn't, and it was this courage to forgive that sustained him during the frightening riots that followed the Rodney King verdict one year later. The strength of Marin's forgiveness and faith allowed him to turn his negative experience into a positive model for rebuilding the destruction and injustice that was all around.

He stayed in L.A., despite the dangers and friends who urged him to leave. He remembers how terrifying those weeks were. Angry people brandished weapons in the streets just outside his home, less than a block from where King was beaten a year earlier. "As a minister I felt the need to be around, to be available," Marin said. "If the church leaves, who else will be left?

For more on this theme, go to www.thirdway.com/Rad/For/