Some Thoughts On (Almost) Being Arrested

On a regular basis I am stopped by the Kenyan Police Department. Often I am asked for bribes. Amost always they mention an obscure "offense" pertaining to my 20 year old car (your passenger window doesn't roll down, etc). Sunday I had a different experience altogether.

The first thing you need to know, though, is that I had the opportunity to preach on being the body of Christ on Sunday morning. It went pretty well, and I was pretty pleased with my challenge to the congregation to put off the old self and live like new creation people for Christ.

On the way home I was pulled by a police officer who promptly told me that I had committed an offense because one of my tires was too worn. "Seriously?" I thought. "That doesn't even sound like a real ticket." And so I somewhat politely I told the guy that I didn't believe that was really a ticket but if he wanted to write me a ticket I would take it.  Which he did.

Now you should know that in my probably dozens of times of being stopped I have never seen anyone ever receive a ticket. I assumed this was part of the bribe rigamarole. So I sat there smug and calm, waiting to give him my self-righteous answer about bribes when he asked. Except he never did. Just handed me a ticket and told me to come to court the next day at 8 a.m.

This post is part public confession.

I lost my temper. I was rude. I asked the guy why he was bothering, why he wanted to waste my time with a garbage ticket when we both had better things to do. By the time I drove off I was shouting at the guy, making a fool of myself, and effectively doing the worst demonstration of putting off the old self I could possibly come up with considering I'd been eloquently preaching on the matter like 27 minutes previously.

Three things happened that evening. First, I called a local, well-connected friend to ask him what I should do, because I didn't know what to expect at court or even where it was. Second, I researched on the internet and quickly found that this officer was fully within his rights; driving with a worn tire is a ticketable offense. And third, Jesus convicted my socks off that I had chewed out one of the few officers I'd run into in the last year and a half who wasn't trying to rip me off. One in a hundred had actually been doing his job; and I yelled at him.

My friend knew the head of the traffic department at the police station. The officer told me to just bring the ticket in and he'd throw out the offense. By the time I got there I was so riddled with guilt that I asked to see the officer who had given me the ticket, prompting the two officers I was with to ask me why and forcing me to explain that I had been very rude and needed to apologize. And then the guy who is currently throwing out this ticket for me, says "Ah, that is very bad. And were you coming from church?"

"Actually I was preaching." Yikes.

In the end I apologized by letter to the officer I had spoken with and apologized to his immediate supervisor. I promised to try to treat each individual officer by their own actions, to not judge them by the actions of other officers I'd encountered. And I left.

Why am I writing all of this? Public confession, I suppose. We're studying Jonah right now at church, and I read somewhere that one interpretation of that whole story is the tale of missionaries who need converting. Clearly my hard heart falls in that category. And because sometimes I have a soft heart towards those the world finds less loveable (the poor, people from other cultures), it's easy for me to get all puffed up and make a fool of myself with my lack of love to somebody else (say by preaching on love and then yelling at a police officer).

But also it demonstrates a powerful point about the difference in the lives between the wealthy and the poor as well. Wealth and education come with a whole basket of benefits that we don't always recognize, not least the benefit of social capital with people who are connected, in power, in the know. I didn't do anything illegal, nor did my friend. But because I "knew somebody who knew somebody," I was able to get the info I needed. Here and at home systems of all sorts can be like nets that the poor among us get caught up in, and often times their social capital doesn't include people who have influence or knowledge to help them get out. What a blessing it has been in my life to have an uncle who does my taxes, a dad who helped me buy my first health insurance policy, lawyer friends who helped me get out of more than one ticket. I got my last two jobs largely through being recommended by people who were connected.

And so often these are the exact things that the poor don't have. Ever since we helped our househelp get a bank account she has saved faithfully. But among her own peers that wasn't something anybody really knew a whole lot about. And so maybe another lesson in all of us is that by building relationships with the poor, by simply letting them into our lives, we will let them into our networks and be able to help them in real and empowering ways. Meanwhile we will be blessed by their social-networks as we learn more about a different culture, about the hospitality that is nearly always best demonstrated by the poor, and about the depth of relationships forged on the margins.

Peace,
Michael