A Pastor’s Prescription for Overcoming Victim Mentality

Last August, as Americans watched the fallout from a police shooting in Kenosha, Wis., pastor James E. Ward Jr. found himself in a position to help. The victim, Jacob Blake, had been shot seven times in the back. Violence erupted in Kenosha. Ward, pastor and founder of INSIGHT Church in the north Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill., turned to prayer.

“I get this phone call on my cellphone from Julia Jackson,” Ward tells The Daily Signal. “Julia Jackson is one of our faithful intercessory-prayer team members in our church. Julia happens to be the mother of Jacob Blake Jr. … And we prayed that Jacob would live and not die. And we’re thankful that he’s alive today, and he’s doing well.”

The shooting left Blake paralyzed below the waist. Yet both Jackson, Blake’s mother, and Ward, her pastor, decided “to speak a different narrative. We weren’t calling for a hatred. We weren’t calling for destruction. We’re calling for peace and speaking the love of God over the city. And it really went viral.”

Ward rejects “victim mentality” and ideologies like critical race theory. He purposefully took a different approach from Black Lives Matter and found himself working with President Donald Trump last year. Now, he’s preaching this “new attitude” in a book called “Zero Victim.”

Ward visited The Daily Signal to discuss “Zero Victim: Overcoming Injustice With a New Attitude” and his experience in Kenosha last year. 

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