- Jun 29, 2019
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In Matthew 22:39, Jesus says the second great commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. This is the commandment inferred by the pastor in Alabama who was arrested as a result of his watering his neighbor’s flowers. The pastor summed it best in referring to the incident: ““The Bible teaches us to love thy neighbor, whether it’s the one you want to water their flowers for, or the one who calls the police on you.” Regarding the latter part of that statement, the police were summoned because a neighbor, not recognizing the pastor, called the police on him. She did not recognize the pastor from a distance, and the irony is that earlier in the year she had invited the pastor, whose congregation at Vision of Abundant Life Church in Sylacauga comprises about 20 people, to her son’s graduation party later in the summer.
So what do you have? You have two people loving their neighbor, and it goes terribly wrong. The pastor was loving his neighbor by watering his flowers while the neighbor was vacationing, and the woman was loving her neighbor by calling the police upon seeing someone she didn’t recognize, acting suspiciously, as in, perhaps, why would a stranger water her neighbor’s plants without having a sinister ulterior motive in mind?
Amidst these two acts is a wrong that one cannot put a finger on. And the police? They responded as police would be expected to do when someone reports somebody suspicious in their neighbor’s yard. In essence, the police, acting for a government presumably under God, was fulfilling 1 Timothy 5:8 in looking after the government’s household, which in this case was the beat the police were patrolling.
Ona can point out that when the woman got closer to the pastor as he was being arrested, she told police that she made a mistake; she knows the pastor as her neighbor, but the police, in accordance with guidelines imposed by the government they worked for, arrested the pastor anyway and had him processed. The jurisdiction, in its godly wisdom, dismissed the charges and the pastor was set free. I imagine that If God was physically in the shoes of the jurisdiction, He would have done the same thing. One could say He was in their shoes like He is in us.
Is there a lesson here? Why did the police arrest the pastor, even though the woman said she made a mistake? Perhaps, in another touch of irony, the police may not have been acquainted with the woman enough to believe that she was the one who called them. Perhaps for the police to act responsibly, they should know the neighbors in the beat they patrol, enough to say ‘Hey, we know this man, he lives in the neighborhood. He’s doing nothing wrong that we can gather.’
There is a wrong in here somewhere, but it is hard to identify exactly what that wrong was except to say that it was wrong for the pastor to be arrested, though it seems through no fault of anyone in particular.
So what do you have? You have two people loving their neighbor, and it goes terribly wrong. The pastor was loving his neighbor by watering his flowers while the neighbor was vacationing, and the woman was loving her neighbor by calling the police upon seeing someone she didn’t recognize, acting suspiciously, as in, perhaps, why would a stranger water her neighbor’s plants without having a sinister ulterior motive in mind?
Amidst these two acts is a wrong that one cannot put a finger on. And the police? They responded as police would be expected to do when someone reports somebody suspicious in their neighbor’s yard. In essence, the police, acting for a government presumably under God, was fulfilling 1 Timothy 5:8 in looking after the government’s household, which in this case was the beat the police were patrolling.
Ona can point out that when the woman got closer to the pastor as he was being arrested, she told police that she made a mistake; she knows the pastor as her neighbor, but the police, in accordance with guidelines imposed by the government they worked for, arrested the pastor anyway and had him processed. The jurisdiction, in its godly wisdom, dismissed the charges and the pastor was set free. I imagine that If God was physically in the shoes of the jurisdiction, He would have done the same thing. One could say He was in their shoes like He is in us.
Is there a lesson here? Why did the police arrest the pastor, even though the woman said she made a mistake? Perhaps, in another touch of irony, the police may not have been acquainted with the woman enough to believe that she was the one who called them. Perhaps for the police to act responsibly, they should know the neighbors in the beat they patrol, enough to say ‘Hey, we know this man, he lives in the neighborhood. He’s doing nothing wrong that we can gather.’
There is a wrong in here somewhere, but it is hard to identify exactly what that wrong was except to say that it was wrong for the pastor to be arrested, though it seems through no fault of anyone in particular.
