A thief must certainly make restitution, but if he has nothing, he must be sold to pay for his theft. --Exodus22:3(b)A few weeks ago I was listening to a radio essay on NPR about one particular community and how they deal with folks with mental disabilities. Legend has it that a young woman name Dymphna fled to a small town in Belgium called Geel to escape the advances of her father, an Irish king who had gone insane after his wife, Dymphna's mother, died. The king ascertained her whereabouts, and travelled to Belgium to retreive her. When she refused to return with him, she was martyred.
Building upon this legend, a church was built in Geel in the mid-14th century to honor Saint Dymphna. By the late 15th century, so many pilgrims were coming to Geel from all over Europe to seek treatment for the mentally ill that the church ran out of room to house them all. The townspeople began taking them into their own homes, starting a tradition that continues to this day.
Now, none of these townspeople have studied medicine. They are not trying to "heal" the mentally unstable people who come to live with them. Their culture is to simply accommodate them. When a person who has been labeled "insane" in another part of the world comes to Geel, the town elders meet together to decide which family will house them. The family is not told of their condition; they simply open their home to a complete stranger, and try to make them feel at home.
One woman was interviewed whose house-guest would obsessively twist off all of the buttons on his shirt each day. The woman would faithfully sew the buttons on each night for the man, knowing full well that she would have to do it again the next day. The interviewer asked why don't you give him a pullover shirt, or why not use fishing line to sew the buttons back on (so it would be harder to twist off). The woman shook her head and said, "No. That would be a disservice to the man. You see, he needs to twist off his buttons each day. That is why I sew them back on for him each night."
A man was interviewed whose house-guest would frequently make inappropriate advances toward his wife. When that happened, the man would grasp the young ward by the back of the neck and guide him outside. "That is my wife," he would say. "You need to find your own woman." It turns out that the young ward met a young woman at a mixer organized by the town council. They began dating, and the young man no longer makes untoward advances to his house-mother. Because of this older couple's guidance, the "broken" man found love with a "broken" woman, who was the house-guest of another family.
Several have tried to export the Geel model to other cities. One Harvard grad student, after travelling to Geel to study the culture there, went back and asked for an educational grant to study the Geel model and try to replicate it in the United States. Her application for the grant was denied, and her advisor told her that in the US, the culture is so different--here, it is all about "fixing" people. Millions are spent on treatments and medications to moderate the symptoms of mental illness, with the result that the expectation is for them to get better. In all of our effort to make them well, according to this Harvard professor, we would not accept a paradigm shift of accommodating the insane, as they have been doing in Geel for over 600 years. By contrast, American culture is to fix them, and if they cannot be fixed, then we send them away to an institution, where they are restrained, controlled, and anesthetized into a stupor so they won't be a burden to society. That is our expectation.
We cannot abide broken people, because we, ourselves, are broken.
Last week I heard a sermon about submitting as a servant or slave to God. When we think of slavery, we think of abuses--of subjugation, of forced labor, of life-long ownership. However, when God gave His law to His people, he set up rules for bond-servants, which had to be followed to the letter. First off, a slave was not to be owned for the rest of his life. "If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh yeart, he shall go free, without paying anything." (Exodus 21:2). There were also rules about humane treatment, payment for services, etc. that made the Hebrew idea of indentured servitude very different from our ideas of slavery.
So how would a member of a God-chosen race of Hebrews find himself sold into slavery? It was not by being captured or overrun by a neighboring Hebrew tribe. Most often it was his own doing, either by incurring a debt he could not repay, or by being caught in a crime. "If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep." (Exodus 22:1). In our civil justice system, the very worst judgment that can be made against you is treble damages, or three times the value of the loss. In ancient Hebrew times, it was quadruple or even quintuple damages.
Imagine for a moment, if you will, that you are an ancient Hebrew. You are not rich by any means, but you have a small lot to farm, and a yoke of oxen with which to plow. You have some sheep and chickens, and you trade some milk and eggs and wool for things that you cannot make at home like shoes or building supplies for your house and shed. One morning you wake up and find one of your oxen missing. You ask around, and find that someone stole it and took it to the local butcher. The butcher identifies who brought the animal in, and you take him to the Judge. Under the law, the judge says that the thief must make restitution: five oxen for the ox that was taken. Unfortunately, the theif is so poor he cannot pay the fine. The judge asks you if you want him to work off the debt on your own farm, or whether you want him sold for the price of five oxen. You decide that he can work for you, that he would not need to be sold--you still have an ox in your stable, and you can make do for now.
According to the law, once the servant has earned enough to pay off the price of the five oxen, he is free to go, with the maximum time of six years. Now most of us do not own livestock, so we have no idea how much one ox costs, much less five. Think instead about the car you drive. My older SUV is worth about $3000; my wife's car is worth about $13,000. Minimum wage is about $300 per week, or about $15,600 per year. If the perp stole my car, he would have worked off the debt in one year. If he stole my wife's car, it would take a little over 4 and a half years to pay it off. Maybe your car is more of a luxury car than we drive, and it would take over 6 years to pay it off. You would have to let him go in the 7th year under the law.
If you are still awake after all the applied mathematics, I want you to think about having the thief as your employee. If you were the scratch farmer who lost the ox, you might want him to clear some land adjacent to your field, so you could increase your yield and buy a new ox. You wouldn't want to leave him alone, however--he is a thief, after all. You would probably be there working with him, both to keep him honest, and also to make sure the trees are felled and stripped, and loaded onto your wagon. You plan to sell the trees to the sawmill for money to buy extra seed. The seed will be sown in the expanded field, and by harvest time, God willing, you will reap a bountiful harvest.
As you are working with your indentured servant, you start telling him about these plans. You model for him how hard work and planning can pay off, with God's help. The servant finally opens up to you, and tells you about his family--maybe how he was orphaned at age 13, with many younger brothers and sisters to feed. You hear how this 13-year old (an adult, by ancient Hebrew standards) was able to continue his father's business, but within four years the business went bankrupt. You learn that his siblings were sent to the neighbor's fields each autumn to harvest the "gleanings" (another ancient Hebrew practice for taking care of the poor and indigent), but that his younger sister became ill and it took all they had to care for her. You let him take some of his wages home with him, to give to his siblings for their needs. You see that he is a hard worker, and by the time his debt to you is paid off, you offer to keep him on as a hired hand, at double the wages (because he is no longer paying you for the oxen); or you may know of another land owner for whom the young man can work, and maybe even apprentice for and learn a trade from.
Do you see what just happened there? A relationship was built all because of the Law that had been broken. A life was changed due to the payment of a debt. A hope and a future was given to a man who had hit rock bottom.
Isn't that what Jesus did for us? He came to build a relationship with us, because there is no way we could keep the Law by ourselves. He paid the debt for us, and our lives have been changed forever. We now have a hope and a future--we were not sent to some prison; we were not forced into an asylum for the criminally insane. Those places would not have helped us. God has given us a better way. "I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope." (Jeremiah 29:11).
I don't do relationships very well. I am broken. Thank God I have someone willing to take me into His house and sew on my buttons, even when I twist them off each day. Praise Him that He has made a way to pay my debt, and to offer me a welfare plan that is far and away better than that offered by any country on earth. Because of His generous acts toward me, I can pay the blessings forward to other broken people. I may not know their whole story, but I do know that God decided to have them cross paths with me for a reason.
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