Killing Good

Are we, as a society, now literally killing good?

On January 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and U.S. citizen, was fatally shot during a federal immigration enforcement operation in south Minneapolis. She was inside her SUV on a residential street when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents approached her vehicle. An ICE agent fired multiple shots into the car. Renee Good later died from her injuries at a hospital.

Federal officials quickly framed the killing as self-defense, claiming Good attempted to use her vehicle as a weapon against officers. According to that account, the agent perceived an imminent threat during the operation.

But video footage and eyewitness testimony have complicated—and in some cases directly contradicted—that narrative. Publicly circulated videos appear to show Good’s vehicle reversing and turning away as agents approached, not charging toward them. At the moment shots were fired, the agent who discharged his weapon does not appear to be directly in the vehicle’s path. Local officials, including Minneapolis leadership, have openly disputed the federal characterization of events.

The killing sparked protests, vigils, and calls for independent investigation. Yet beyond the legal questions lies a deeper one: what kind of society produces conditions in which this outcome becomes possible—and defensible?

An encounter that never needed to happen

At the time of the shooting, ICE agents were conducting a targeted immigration enforcement operation. Federal officials insist the operation focused on arresting individuals with outstanding immigration violations, not random stops or neighborhood sweeps. Renee Good was not a target.

Agents were moving between enforcement locations when they encountered her vehicle. ICE describes the interaction as incidental. The agents involved were operating as part of a broader federal enforcement surge, using plainclothes officers and unmarked vehicles.

This context raises uncomfortable questions. Why engage a vehicle whose driver was not being sought? Were agents clearly identifiable as law enforcement? Why did an encounter escalate to lethal force so quickly? These are not peripheral questions. They are central to understanding how power is being exercised in our public life.

Immigration as a moral litmus test

The enforcement surge in Minnesota was officially framed as part of a nationwide expansion of interior immigration enforcement under President Trump, not as a Minnesota-specific punishment. No public document shows a direct order targeting the state out of vengeance alone.

And yet political context matters. Minnesota has frequently been singled out rhetorically by Trump and senior officials, particularly in relation to refugee populations and resistance by state and local leaders to federal enforcement cooperation. To many residents, the surge felt punitive in tone even if not explicit in documentation.

Trump’s sustained focus on immigration is not accidental. Immigration has functioned as one of his most effective political instruments—mobilizing supporters, simplifying complex social anxieties, and reinforcing a law-and-order narrative centered on control and sovereignty. In this framework, immigrants become symbols: of disorder, of lost authority, of a nation supposedly slipping out of control.

Immigration policy thus becomes more than policy. It becomes a moral diagnostic. It reveals what a society does when it encounters vulnerability—and how it understands power.

Shalom or empire?

A shalom socio-economic narrative and an empire narrative tell radically different stories about power, belonging, and peace.

Shalom is oriented toward right relationship—between people, institutions, communities, and the land. It prioritizes human dignity, hospitality to the vulnerable, proportionality in enforcement, and long-term communal flourishing. In a shalom frame, immigrants are neighbors before they are cases. Authority exists, but it is bounded by mercy, due process, and the goal of repair. The question shalom always asks is simple and demanding: Does this policy reduce fear and expand the conditions for life together?

Empire tells a different story. Its primary concern is control. Order is maintained through force, spectacle, and hierarchy. People are categorized instrumentally—useful, expendable, loyal, threatening. In this story, immigrants function as symbols of disorder, and enforcement becomes performative: raids, surges, and crackdowns designed to demonstrate dominance. Fear is not a failure of the system; it is one of its tools.

Trump-era immigration ideology aligns far more closely with this empire narrative than with shalom. The emphasis on mass enforcement, visible displays of power, punishment of non-cooperating states, and rhetoric that frames immigrants as threats reflects a worldview in which authority must be asserted and resistance subdued. Even when labeled “law and order,” such approaches fracture trust and undermine the peace they claim to protect.

Good, evil, and the direction of power

The question here is not whether individuals are good or evil. The more faithful question is about direction.

Good moves toward life, dignity, truth, and right relationship. Evil moves toward fear, domination, distortion, and the reduction of persons into means. Most systems contain both—but the dominant orientation still matters.

There are legitimate goods in order and rule of law. But when order is severed from dignity and accountability, it curdles. Evil in this sense is rarely spectacular. It is systemic. It is what happens when fear is normalized, spectacle replaces discernment, and violence becomes justifiable because the people harmed have already been reduced to symbols.

From a shalom perspective, the moral test is this: Does power expand or shrink our moral imagination? Empire always shrinks it. It trains us to look away.

An evil age—and a contested one

In this sense, we do live within what Scripture would recognize as an evil age: not because goodness is absent, but because distortion is built into many of the systems that shape everyday life. Fear is incentivized. Domination is rationalized. Human dignity is conditional.

And yet this age is not total. It is contested. Good persists—through truth-telling, hospitality, courage, and repair. Empire may be dominant, but it is not ultimate.

The more urgent question is not “Is this an evil age?”

It is:

• What kind of people is this age forming us into?
• Where are we being trained to look away?
• Where are we being invited—quietly or boldly—to practice shalom anyway?

Exile, Jesus, and the work before us

Biblical exile theology teaches that faithfulness does not require control. Israel, stripped of sovereignty, is not told to revolt or withdraw, but to seek the shalom of the city even in Babylon. Identity precedes power.

Jesus embodies this exile posture under Roman empire. He refuses violent resistance and refuses accommodation. Instead, he forms a counter-community marked by shared life, truth-telling, mercy, and enemy-love. He does not defeat empire by seizing its throne, but by exposing its lies about power and peace. The cross is not passivity; it is a refusal to secure life through domination.

For communities today, this translates into practices of resistance, repentance, and repair:

• Resistance that refuses empire’s narratives of fear and scapegoating
• Repentance that names how empire lives inside us, not just over us
• Repair that practices shalom locally even when systems remain broken

And always, the discipline of not becoming empire ourselves—refusing coercive unity, bounded power, protecting the vulnerable, keeping mercy central.

Killing good

Renee Good did not just lose her life. Her death confronts us with a terrible possibility: that we are living in a society increasingly capable of killing good itself—not only in bodies, but in conscience, imagination, and relationship.

Empire always claims inevitability.

Shalom always begins as improbable fidelity.

The work before us is not to defeat empire on its own terms, but to remain human inside it:

to see clearly,

to love stubbornly,

to repair patiently,

and to refuse the lie that domination is the only way the world works.

That refusal—quiet, costly, and communal—is how good survives.