By Virgil Walker, Op-ed contributor Tuesday, June 17, 2025Police push back protesters from the Edward Roybal Federal Building on June 9, 2025 in Downtown Los Angeles, California. Tensions in the city remain high after the Trump administration called in the National Guard against the wishes of city leaders. | Jim Vondruska/Getty Images

The images coming out of Los Angeles are stark and unmistakable: masked rioters hurling rocks at federal immigration officers, cars ablaze in intersections, foreign flags waving defiantly over American streets.

What we’re witnessing isn’t just another bout of civil unrest — it’s the logical conclusion of decades of moral confusion masquerading as compassion.

And let’s be crystal clear from the start: there is no justification for this lawlessness. None.

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Romans 13:1-2 leaves no room for negotiation: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

The lie of “justified” violence

Los Angeles has a shameful history of violent and destructive riots — Watts in 1965, the Rodney King riots in 1992, the George Floyd riots in 2020. Each time, we were told to understand the “root causes,” to empathize with the “frustrated voices,” to see the riots as “the language of the unheard.”

All of it was wrong. Every single time.

Violence against innocent people is sin. Destroying property is theft. Attacking law enforcement is rebellion against God-ordained authority. It doesn’t matter what injustice someone thinks they’re protesting, grievance cannot justify lawlessness.

A pattern of rewarded rebellion

These current riots reveal something particularly disturbing: Rioters aren’t even pretending to seek justice within the American system. When people wave foreign flags while attacking American law enforcement with Molotov cocktails and commercial-grade fireworks, they’re rejecting America’s right to exist as a sovereign nation.

And why shouldn’t they? We’ve spent decades teaching them that rebellion works.

After Watts, we poured billions of dollars into urban renewal programs. After the Rodney King riots, we implemented police reforms and sensitivity training. After the George Floyd riots, corporations donated billions to activist organizations, while politicians took a knee and promised to “re-imagine” law enforcement.

The message has been consistent: Burn things down, and you’ll get what you want.

We’ve created a generation that has learned that violence pays. But it gets worse, we haven’t just rewarded the rioters; we’ve punished those who opposed them. Business owners who defended their property were ridiculed. Police officers who tried to maintain order were defunded and driven from their jobs.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in cities across America have systematically refused to charge rioters, vandals, and looters. The result? A generation that believes the rules don’t apply to them —   because, let’s be honest, they don’t.

When sanctuary cities openly defy federal immigration law, they’re teaching immigrants that American law is optional. When mayors order police to stand down during riots, they teach criminals that violence has no consequences.

The wages of moral confusion

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have spent years cultivating the conditions for this chaos through deliberate policy choices that prioritize ideology over order.

California became a sanctuary state in 2017, and under Newsom’s leadership, that policy has been pushed into every single corner of California, as local authorities are ordered to not cooperate with federal immigration officials. When ICE attempted to conduct raids targeting criminal illegal immigrants — people who had already been ordered deported — Newsom’s administration actively obstructed them. They provided legal aid to help people evade federal authorities. They issued warnings about enforcement actions. They turned the state government into a shield for lawbreakers.

Mayor Bass has been equally complicit. Rather than condemning the recent violence unequivocally, she blamed the Trump administration for “provoking” the chaos, suggesting that enforcing immigration law was somehow inflammatory.

However, moral confusion runs deeper than policy positions. Both leaders have taught an entire generation that America doesn’t deserve their loyalty, that its laws lack legitimacy, and that resistance to authority is not just acceptable but praiseworthy.

When Newsom calls the federal deployment of the National Guard “unlawful” while rioters attack federal officers, he defends the right to ignore federal law. When Bass blames the Trump administration for violence committed by people throwing rocks and incendiary devices at law enforcement officers, she’s making it clear that she sees law enforcement as the problem, not law breaking.

The most revealing moment came when Newsom arrived in Los Angeles and declared local law enforcement didn’t need federal help — even as tear gas exploded in the background and Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell admitted that his department was “overwhelmed.”

This is how civilizations die: when leaders can no longer distinguish between order and chaos, between justice and lawlessness, between protecting citizens and protecting criminals.

The federal response: Restoring constitutional order

When President Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops and placed 500 Marines on “prepared to deploy” status, he wasn’t escalating the situation — he was fulfilling government’s biblical mandate to bear the sword against evildoers.

The numbers tell the story of the crisis: At least 10 people were arrested in the initial response, with LAPD Chief McDonnell warning that those arrests would “pale in comparison to what will be made.” In addition, officers were injured and federal vehicles destroyed by rocks and Molotov cocktails. The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of suspects who assaulted federal officers.

Currently, 300 members of the California National Guard’s 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team are deployed for 60 days across Los Angeles, Paramount, and Compton. This isn’t political theater — it’s a basic constitutional duty.

The federal government has the responsibility to enforce federal law and protect federal officers. When California officials actively undermine federal immigration enforcement and then fail to protect federal officers from violent attack, they’ve invited federal intervention.

FBI Director Kash Patel put it perfectly: “Just so we are clear, this FBI needs no one’s permission to enforce the Constitution. LA is under siege by marauding criminals, and we will restore law and order.”

The deployment sends a clear message: The rule of law still means something in America. Federal officers will be protected. Criminal behavior will have consequences. The safety of law-abiding citizens will not be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.

Consider the alternative. If the federal government had stood by while its officers were attacked with rocks, commercial-grade fireworks, and Molotov cocktails, it would have signaled to every criminal organization and anarchist group that America will not defend itself.

That truism was made very clear during the summer of 2020 when Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and riots broke out in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s death and continued throughout the summer. Those riots not only sowed chaos and fear but they caused more than $1.4 billion in destruction, with businesses burned to the ground and inner city communities hollowed out. They also caused numerous deaths. Among the victims were David Dorn, a 77-year-old retired police officer who was fatally shot in St. Louis while trying to protect a friend’s business from looters and Secoriea Turner, an 8-year-old girl who was shot and killed after her mother’s car was surrounded and attacked by a BLM mob in Atlanta.

Against this backdrop, it’s hardly a surprise that the current riots have already spread beyond Los Angeles this week. Over 20 anti-ICE rioters were arrested in New York City during similar confrontations with immigration authorities, for example. In Seattle, Antifa and other violent rioters laid siege to a federal building, setting fires, shooting incendiary devices, and attempting to block all exits. In Newark, New Jersey, protesters tried to violently storm the Delaney Hall ICE facility in an effort to free the illegal criminal immigrants held there (the same site where a sitting congresswoman was arrested and indicted for assaulting ICE officers).

This time around, however, the Trump administration has made it clear that it will act when necessary to surge resources, help support local authorities, restore law and order, protect people and property, and arrest, charge, and try those who break federal law. This strategy of “peace through strength” will serve to deter some rioters, force state and city leaders to step up, and help restore law and order.

Institutional leadership failure

The real tragedy isn’t just the riots themselves — it’s the complete failure of the institutions that should be teaching order, respect for authority, and basic citizenship.

For decades, public education has systematically undermined respect for American institutions, teaching students that America is fundamentally racist and that law enforcement is inherently oppressive. Higher education has become a factory for producing activists who see every authority as illegitimate and every law as potentially oppressive.

The media has spent years crafting narratives that paint ICE agents as storm troopers and immigration raids as modern-day gestapo operations. Many churches have abandoned their biblical responsibility to teach Romans 13, instead preaching social justice over submission to lawful authority.

When politicians openly declare their cities to be “sanctuaries” from federal law, when prosecutors refuse to prosecute crimes, when judges release violent offenders without bail, they’re teaching everyone that the justice system is optional.

The riots in Los Angeles are the inevitable result of institutional failure at every level. We’ve systematically dismantled respect for authority, teaching instead that resistance is virtue and rebellion is righteousness.

The choice before us

This moment demands clarity, not nuance; courage, not compromise; and truth, not therapeutic explanations for evil.

We must support leaders who will enforce the law without apology. We must rebuild institutions that form character and respect for authority. Most importantly, we must remember that God’s kingdom operates according to God’s principles — including respect for legitimate authority, punishment of evildoers, and protection of the innocent.

The flames in Los Angeles are a warning. But for those with eyes to see, they’re also a call to action: It’s time for the people of God to stand unequivocally for order, justice, and the rule of law.

Because when we don’t, this is what we get. And it’s only the beginning.

Originally published at the Standing for Freedom Center. 

Virgil L. Walker is the Executive Director of Operations for G3 Ministries, an author, and a conference speaker. He is the co-host of the Just Thinking Podcast. Virgil is passionate about teaching, disciple-making, and sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Virgil and his wife Tomeka have been married for 26 years and have three children. Listen to his podcast here.