Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Does the Bible Say Anything About Policing? Part I | Luke 3.14

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Well, this episode could be pretty interesting because Keith and I've been sitting in the office debating and arguing and having a conversation. I don't know if I can say everything I think, though. I don't know if I can say everything that I think. Because I'm not even sure I'm right on half this. I just like to have a good dialogue and learn by processing together. That's good. Well, and we'll see. Let's say the opposite. So today we're talking about a New Testament theology of policing. What's the Bible say about policing? And to state the obvious, Keith, have you ever been a police officer? I have not ever even thought about being a police officer. I'm way too scared to do anything like that. Do you own a gun, Patrick? I don't. Do you? No, I would be far more dangerous to myself than anyone else if I owned a gun. That is exactly why I don't own a gun. But it's kind of funny that neither one of us own guns. and yet we're having this conversation.

Starting point is 00:01:06 Well, need I remind you and our listeners that I recently did a podcast about Christian nonviolence, not using violence. So maybe that says even more about me. People can go back and listen to it. But today we want to talk about what the Bible says about policing. And I feel like it's really important in this conversation to try to be careful so that you, whoever's listening, doesn't misinterpret what we're saying. Patrick is saying he wants to defund the police. Let's be super clear. Just kidding. That is absolutely not what I'm saying. Although that's the debate today, isn't it? People seem to think you either want to defund or defend the police. And if you're in one camp, you think that the police are evil. And if you think it in one camp, the police are all good.

Starting point is 00:01:50 They do nothing wrong. And, I mean, can we just be honest? That's a simplistic way of thinking. Anytime you get into black and white thinking, you've already gone too far. You aren't thinking very carefully. And so we have to start by saying that we don't think that all police are evil. We don't think that all police are good. We think all police are people. And you know what you can expect about people? Mixed bags. Just like you and me. Let's use pastors. I know pastors who are pretty good people. And I know pastors who are pretty bad people as well. Mixed back. That's true of any job. Yeah. And I have several friends who are in police officers, big part of our church, or police officers, FBI agents, DEA agents. And some of my men's groups are. some of those officers, and they're great guys here are trying to figure out how to follow Jesus, just like the rest of us are, and how to do their job with excellence and integrity. And I really

Starting point is 00:02:41 respect them. And I think a lot of police officers out there are like them, not necessarily being Christians, but trying to do their job with excellence and integrity. I think there are many sincere Christian, and like you said, non-Christian police officers, they want to protect their communities, they want to serve their communities. They want to make their communities a better place to live, a safer place to live. Because I think we all understand that if you have a community where there is actually law and order, where there's not chaos and crime, that's a community where people can flourish, a community where businesses want to move in. It's a community where people can get jobs, where people can live independently, where people live without fear. We all want to

Starting point is 00:03:18 live in those kinds of neighborhoods. And some of us do. Some of us don't. But that's, I think, what the best police officers, it's the kind of world they want to make. Yeah, we couldn't live in those kind of communities of law and order and safety and those kind of things without officers out doing their job. And so we have a lot of respect for them. But at the same time, there are officers who cross lines and do things that they obviously shouldn't do. And usually the people who you'll hear first to criticize when an officer crosses the line are the good officers. They recognize that people in their own ranks and maybe even themselves from time to time. If they're like me, I'm sure they've made mistakes, that they regret. They say, we've crossed the

Starting point is 00:03:57 line. But there's something about some of us that feels like we have to defend police officers at all times, that we're unable or unwilling to sit back and say, hey, you know what? I love what the officers are doing in my community, but that crossed a line. That was wrong. We cannot tolerate that. It's not unchristian to critique a pastor who does something immoral, something wrong. We understand that with pastors, like let's say a pastor sleeps with a woman in his congregation that's not his wife, where a pastor abuses funds. Let's say something like that happens. We all understand that there's nothing wrong with critiquing what happened, with calling it out,

Starting point is 00:04:36 and with dealing with the problem. That doesn't make you unchristian. It doesn't make you anti-Christian to do that. In fact, I would say it makes you being very pro-Christian because you want to have a church that is looking like and abiding by Jesus's commands. But the other part of that is that we understand fundamentally that a pastor has a higher level of responsibility. They're not just an everyday person. They're called to represent Jesus maybe in an even more special way than the average person. They're called to a higher standard. This is what

Starting point is 00:05:03 Paul says to Timothy when Timothy is picking people who are going to lead churches. And I would argue that something similar goes for police officers. See, just like pastors who are in the business of serving, police officers are in the business of serving. And that's why you should be there. And if you have the power to take away life, if you have the power to exert the state's force, you should be held to a high standard, just like a pastor's held to a high standard. You should be held to a high standard. And I think most police officers want to be held to high standards, just like most pastors want to be held to high standards. But I'm not going to feel guilty or bad about talking about those standards. I'm glad that the Christian police officers in our community, Patrick, didn't listen to your podcast episode in which you told them that they were all in the wrong profession.

Starting point is 00:05:44 Because I'm glad they're Christian police officers. I'm like you. Let's be clear. I never said I didn't want police officers. You don't think Christians should be police officers? I said I don't think that Christians should use deadly force. Oh, so the Christian police officers was to carry a water gun? Maybe a taser. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh, people pray for me.

Starting point is 00:06:06 So one of the things when we get into this debate about police officers, I don't mean me and Patrick are us on this podcast, but the cultural debate when we get into it, oftentimes it turns into a white and black issue. But that's not the direction we want to go. I mean, when you just think about police officers, they're a very diverse group made up of men and women from every ethnicity age. They have all the same variations and differences that the general population does. So we're not talking about white versus black. And the neighborhoods where policing happens, which is really all neighborhoods, those neighborhoods are made up of people of many different skin tones. And so we don't want to make this purely into a white and black issue.

Starting point is 00:06:51 I think on the flip side, we also want to acknowledge the fact that this is a debate. And there have been lots of statistics and studies. And some people doubt those. Other people think, oh, they're 100% right. That seemed to be showing that the way that white people are treated by the police is different than the way that black people are treated by the police. And I think that any police officer would say, well, I don't want that to be the case. That's not my desire. They might have a reason for why they see it happening.

Starting point is 00:07:17 but they would say, look, that's not what I want. And I think that's where we're coming at it. If I'm saying, no, we want people to be policed in the same way. And we think that the New Testament has something to say about that. Yeah, if I'm going to be fair and listen to my friends who are, like I said, in some of the Bible studies I lead that are police officers and take them at face value, then I want to listen to my black brothers and sisters in Christ and listen to them when they share their stories that they're extremely troubled by

Starting point is 00:07:42 in their interactions with police officers and take those also at face value. and believe them. So my goal when I listen to my officer friends or my black brothers and sisters who've been on the wrong side of those altercations is not to say who is right and is wrong, it's to listen to both of them and point us back toward Jesus and back toward the scriptures to say there has to be a better way. What's interesting to me is that I didn't think that the Bible really had much to say about policing. If you had asked me just six months ago, hey, Patrick, what's the Bible say to police officers? I think what I would have said is, well, It's got lots of general principles about how we should treat other people. We should follow the

Starting point is 00:08:21 golden rule. A police officer should treat anybody they're dealing with as someone who's made in God's image who has dignity and honor. I might have said those kinds of things. But I would have said now, the New Testament doesn't have anything to say specifically about policing. Yeah, I for sure would have said the same thing. Just be a person of integrity. But then we came across a book called Reading Wild Black by Esau McCauley. This is a hot new book out. Lots of people are reading it. If you haven't it yet. First, you should repent. No, just kidding. And then you should buy it, download it. It's one of my best books of 2020. We're trying to see if we can get the author to come on our podcast. I think he's too big of a deal now. He's too big for us. Well, fair enough. But really sharp guy, a great book.

Starting point is 00:09:04 And so what we wanted to do today is just kind of unpack, since he won't come on our podcast, kind of unpack some of his thoughts in one of the chapters. I think it's chapter two of his book. Worth the price of admission, I would say, just that single chapter, buying the book. So in this book, he refers to the work of a scholar named Chris Furman, who wrote a book called Policing in the Roman Empire. And according to Chris Furman, soldiers, Roman soldiers, played the role that modern-day police officers play. And he has a really helpful definition of what's policing. And he says, look, this is what police officers do today, and it's what, again, Roman soldiers did in the past. Here's how he defines police. Any organized unit of men, and today we might add women,

Starting point is 00:09:46 under official command whose duties involved maintaining the public order and state control in a civilian setting. And that's exactly what Roman soldiers did. I honestly had no idea about this. Roman soldiers, they did guard duty. They would calm public disturbances. They would actually do crime investigation. They were firefighters. They guarded and they oversaw tax collection. They maintained a night watch. They kept peace at big public events and festivals. They oversaw the scales that merchants do use in markets? So I think the big point here is to say that Rome had a police force. If you don't think it had a police force, which I would have counted myself as one who didn't realize that Rome had a police force before reading some of the books we've been talking

Starting point is 00:10:33 about, then you read the New Testament, never asking what does the Bible say about policing because you don't see policing happening anywhere in the Bible. But if you realize that Roman soldiers played the role of the police in that society. Now all of a sudden, all the verses we read about government and authority now take on a new light because Rome really does have a police presence that the biblical authors are addressing. Yeah, the average person's experience of the state in their life, and the state's power and force in their life, just like for us today, that would actually probably be police officers and public officials.

Starting point is 00:11:10 Same exact thing for people living back in Bible days. fact, there was one officer for every 100 people in Rome. And back in those days, there were some serious problems with policing. People would bribe police officers, merchants would, so that they would ignore their false scales. They'd bribe officers so that they could do business. They would use officers, tax officers would. They'd use officers as their muscleed so that they could get more money in taxes and they actually need it. And of course, they'd keep the change. So there were ways back then that there were problems in policing. Just think of John the Baptist when he's talking to the soldiers and everybody's coming out to repent,

Starting point is 00:11:48 he's probably talking to police officers there in Luke chapter 3. And what he tells them is to not extort people out of money. So they are police officers who are tempted, just like Patrick said, to charge people for police protection in a way that was illegal in Rome and would be illegal today. So let's start with John the Baptist really quick. And let's talk about what John the Baptist says to these police. police officers. He's talking to individual police officers and just how they do their jobs. And in many ways, if there are police officers listening to this, that's who we're talking to. We're not talking maybe to the people who are making the larger scale decisions in a police force. We're just talking about everyday people who are trying to do their jobs. And you brought up a great point. The first

Starting point is 00:12:31 thing John says, I'll read it. He says, don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely. Be content with your pay. I think there's a few things we can draw out from that. First of all, you just said, don't extortion. I mean, extortion is really about praying on the week. It's about taking advantage of people who have no recourse. And he's saying, don't do it. Again, most police officers I know they don't really want to do this. But there's a serious warning here that if you are tempted to manipulate or to bully or to use your power to make someone feel small or to take advantage of them in some fashion, that's not the way that Jesus calls us to do policing. Yeah, and he says, do not accuse people falsely. Well, we shouldn't accuse people falsely because it breaks one of the Ten Commandments.

Starting point is 00:13:14 People are made in the image of God, and it is wrong to slander them. Think about Jesus' trial. He was falsely accused. So one of the things that you can draw out of this is that all police officers should treat people with the dignity that belongs to them because they're created in God's image and that those police officers should pursue truth. That's really what we want. If we're doing some sort of investigation, we want to know the facts and truth. We don't just want to build a case to prosecute someone because it looks good on a resume or it clears the record or it makes the newspaper.

Starting point is 00:13:49 And while pulling someone over is not the same thing as charging them with a crime, not in our country, I think there's something to be said here as well. We all have prejudices. I don't care who you are. You have prejudices. And it's easy to let those prejudices shape our decisions. And if you're a police officer, because again, just like a pastor, I'm held to a higher standard. I think police officers should be held to a higher standard of being aware of your prejudices and not acting on them. Again, I know I have this. If I was a police officer, just to be frank, I have prejudices, especially towards people who are poverty. I don't know how to unwire it, but when I see people who are poor, I start making negative assumptions about them. That's not a good thing. It's not treating them like people

Starting point is 00:14:27 who are made in God's image. And I know that if I was a police officer, I would simply be more likely to pull over people who were poor over people who were wealthy. And I would want to be thoughtful and careful before I pulled over someone who was poor just to make sure I wasn't doing it out of my prejudices. So you're suggesting, Patrick, that police officers pull people over because of ethnic prejudices. I have to assume that if these police officers are humans like me, that happens. So you think these black police officers are pulling over white people because they're prejudices against white people?

Starting point is 00:15:00 I think that could happen. Your prejudice can be towards people of your own race. Your prejudice can be towards people of other races. You might not have prejudices towards people of some races. So my point here isn't that if you are an ex-officer, you must be prejudiced towards this group of people. That would be so foolish to think. but my point is that rather than defunding the police,

Starting point is 00:15:20 shouldn't we invest money in helping police being able to both identify those prejudices and make choices not based out of the prejudice, but make choices based on kind of the facts on the ground? But the pullover thing goes into a different dimension. Catch what John said at the end there. He says, be content with your pay. Now, I don't think this is saying that you should never ask for a raise if you're a police officer. Patrick asks for raises regularly around here.

Starting point is 00:15:44 It's 2020. Ask for a raise. Where's my raise? He goes, that's not big enough. How about a bigger one? Here's what I think that that is talking about. In all policing, money gets involved. The way that happens in modern policing is through fees and fines.

Starting point is 00:15:58 And it's really interesting. So we live close to St. Louis, which was where all of the Ferguson... 2015, right? Yeah, all of those events happened. And I don't want to wait into that because it was a complex situation. But the U.S. Justice Department did find in the midst of that that the city of Ferguson was making a pretty penny off of its populace. by pulling people over and doing excessive fines, excessive late fees, that people couldn't stay on top of jailing people as a result of those things.

Starting point is 00:16:25 And I think John would say, hey, if you're a police officer, be thoughtful about when you give someone a fine. Be thoughtful about when you give someone a fee. If you are running the city, the municipality, excessive fines, excessive fees, there's actually a problem with that. Well, it turned out, I think, to be broader than just Ferguson, I think it was a lot of places in St. Louis County, they showed that what the county government was doing is, funding themselves based on these tickets and parking fines and other moving violations. And of course, what that does is it preys on poor people. Not that only poor people get those tickets and fines, but the people who have resources can pay them off as much as we hate to do it. We can get rid of them by just paying the fine, but the poor people can't. And therefore, those fines build up. And people are taking advantage of or preyed upon. And unfortunately,

Starting point is 00:17:16 it's true that if you're going to pray on poor people, you're going to pray on more black people because more black people are below the poverty line as a percentage than white people. So looking at what John the Baptist says, to try and summarize it, he's saying that if you're a police officer, you need to identify that you are the representative of the state. That means that you are the one in that situation who is in power. And you shouldn't pray on people because they aren't in power. I think he'd also say that these people that we are policing, all of them, every single one of us are all made in the image of God that deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. And we need to be thoughtful about how money, ticketing, fines, all of those things

Starting point is 00:17:55 playing to the larger picture of policing. So if you're listening to this and you know much about your Bible, you're probably thinking, hey, what about Romans 13? Romans 13 is the place God gives government the authority, even the sword to use to punish wrongdoing. And so how does Romans 13 fit into this discussion about policing? And maybe even how does it fit into the discussion about protests? Because there's a call in Romans 13 to submit to the government. And some people would say, well, when you're protesting, that's the opposite of submission. So in some ways, it has some things to say about policing, but also things beyond policing.

Starting point is 00:18:32 So we're going to do this in a separate episode, and it'll come out next Thursday, and we'll continue the conversation about policing. But I think we got a great start today. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually.

Starting point is 00:19:01 If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Does the Bible Say Anything About Policing? Part I | Luke 3.14

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