Just kidding. Don't abolish the police. Or do. I don't know, I'm not a political scientist. I'm a theologian, and there's a good chance that you're reading this blog not because you care what I think about public policy. If you want to know that, then buy me a schooner on Wednesday evening after the worship service is over.
But if you want to know what I think about such issues and matters from a theological perspective, well, then you should know that the Bible does not, repeat does not endorse the abolition of the police. At all.
Scripture interprets scripture, I hope we can all understand that. And if Scripture interprets Scripture, you have have to deal with something fun, which is that although Jesus says that he is there to free the prisoners, which he does, he's not in that passage arguing for the abolition of the institution of the police. He's quoting Isaiah 61, in which Isaiah writes "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord hath appointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound" (Emphasis mine.)
That seems to be quite conclusive, but we also need to understand the circumstances in which Isaiah is writing. He's writing to a people who need to have freedom from captivity proclaimed to them because they are people who aren't being locked up behind bars by the police, they're being taken into captivity by a foreign power. The book of Isaiah is a prophetic book, one that chronicles what God will do to restore his people. God works within the framework of the Jubilee year, in which the debts incurred, slavery issued, property seized, and the land itself would all be restored. Every fiftieth year was the year of jubilee, and the captives would be released, would be released from their slavery, and allowed to return back to their homes. But the Jubilee was never meant to be only a thing unto itself. It was never intended that the Jubilee was a thing that God did just because he felt like restoring things every fifty years on principle. Rather, the idea was that the Jubilee was a way of running thing here on earth, but was also a way of showing, through a scanner darkly, what the eternal kingdom of God was going to be like. It's a multilevel bit, where you can see the Jubilee, the return of Israel from captivity, and the promise of paradise all bound up in there. But to be honest, using that passage to make a firm pronouncement that the Bible is against jails on principle is incorrect, and perhaps dishonest.
For there are massive chunks of the Bible that tell you how it is you should run a country, namely Israel. And those rules on the management of Israel do, definitely, contain passages about jail, and about punishment. In fact, the rules that are in the Old Testament are much more draconian than the punishments that people complain about in the United States today. Have a look at the Bible where it outlines capital punishments for crimes, many of them things that we would never consider as even very serious today. Crimes like murder and kidnapping, but also cursing your parents, adultery, bestiality, sorcery, being a medium, breaking the sabbath, and idolatry. There are more besides, but this is a partial list. And anyone who is very police abolition has to understand that God willfully set up a police force to enforce these things, way back in 1 Chronicles 26, and that same institution was the one that arrested Jesus of Nazareth for his alleged blasphemy, and had him passed over to the Romans for execution.
At no point does Jesus of Nazareth make mention of the idea that any of these rules and structures should go away. When the thief on the cross says that he is being punished justly for his crimes, Jesus doesn't fight him on it. When Christ is being taken away for his execution, when he talks about how John the Baptist has been arrested, when he talks about the eventual arrest of the disciples, he doesn't ever say that the institution of the police, of jails, even of execution is unjust and against God.
Now, you may very well say that this is an argument from silence, and you'd be right so far. Just because Jesus doesn't say that something is expressly forbidden, that doesn't mean that it is endorsed. Well, says Paul, hold my hyssop. Paul comes in and tells you about the police, bringing up the fact that they are on earth to do the work of God, no jokes. Now, someone will give me the business and say that these things aren't the police force as we understand it today, and they're right. These institutions from the time of Christ were significantly worse by every metric. Look at the treatment of Jesus while he is arrested - he is beaten, mocked, flogged, spat upon, made to carry his cross and nailed to it. And crucifixion is one of the more unpleasant ways to check out, you know, and is so by design. You're supposed to suffer while you are being crucified, that is the entire point. But the Romans were always there to add insult to injury, and I mean that in the most literal possible way. Mockery, insults, beatings, torture, and eventual death. And Christ declines to speak out against it as an institution.
But I'm not going to go full 'blue lives matter' either. Because everyone who is calling for the abolition of the police wants what I want anyway. It's the same as the pro-life and pro-choice positions - effectively they want the same thing, which is that there should be fewer abortions, but the two sides want to bring that conclusion about in different ways. What someone from the abolish the police camp has in common with me is that we both want the police to be unused. How to get to that point? Well, if you want to abolish the police, you get there by abolishing or defunding the police, and putting that money into community building, education, resources and the like. That's supposed to stop the problem of draconian policing, which it would, but it wouldn't stop the crimes. Oh sure, some crimes would be prevented, crimes born out of a lack of opportunity, or economic depression, or mental health, those could be prevented, but the crimes that could not be prevented like that are crimes that are committed because the perpetrator wants to commit them. That is, you're still going to have the frat boy rapist, and the movie mogul molester; those won't be prevented by increasing funding because they weren't caused by a lack of funding to begin with. These are some of the most privileged people in the world, and they aren't stopped from committing their crimes by having more than enough.
Because the human heart is a disaster, really. The human heart wants to serve itself, to go for what it feels are its best interests, even if it costs other people. And this is an issue that is endemic to the human condition, that is, we all have that fatal flaw built into us that isn't caused by a lack of opportunity, a lack of resources or anything of the like and is instead caused by sinful nature. And we're sinners, so we tend to fall into it.
So, though I may be in favor of increasing funding to mental health resources and community initiatives, I'm switched on enough to know that this isn't going to delete all crime everywhere. We are still going to be people who are immoral, criminal and unpleasant, no matter how much money is dumped into community resources. So what is the question then? Well, it's perfectly straightforward.
The best route forward is to know that this is a spiritual problem before it's a policy problem. And if you're going to offload everything onto the police, don't be surprised if you need more police forever. But if you go back to the source, you may not need the police quite so much at all. You've got to deal with people as spiritual entities. They're people who are almost guaranteed to have sinful thoughts and words before they have sinful deeds. And to offer them the Gospel of Jesus Christ means that instead of ignoring their sinful thoughts and words, pretending that they don't exist or anything like that, they can deal with their sins before they turn into anything that affects anyone else directly. James 1:14-15 tells you as much: 'Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death.' The problems that you see in the world all started with thoughts first, and frequently were words too. But definitely thoughts, lots and lots of thoughts. People sitting and coveting, or lusting, or seething, that kind of thing. If we're going to make serious inroads against the problems of our world, we should start by saying that we are sinful beings who have problems that we want to work on. We are people who want to do better, who want to be better, and who will only be able to do so if we're honest with our desires and words. If we're lying to ourselves about that, though, then things will never improve, and we will always be responding to crimes which, I can guarantee you, will continue to happen. But if you can confess before almighty God that you have thoughts that drive you in the wrong direction, that you have words that are contributing to your thoughts, driving you to actions.
So let's empty the jails, something that we all want. But let's do it through prevention, not just of economic anxiety, but also of spiritual malaise. We can defund the police, refund the police, and fund all kinds of social programs, but let's not stop there. Let's work on healing the individual spiritually, so that when faced with the opportunity to do evil, they may say that they do not want to, rather than that they're afraid to. If we're spiritual creatures who understand that we sin in thought, word and deed, let's work on confessing our thoughts and words, asking God's help with them, to forgive them, understanding them as things we don't want to do, so that the deeds get a bit more nipped in the bud.
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