Nobody can follow the whole law perfectly any more than they can follow all of Scripture perfectly. All of us make choices all of the time.
For example, if you're driving 27 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone, officially, you're breaking the law. But police officers have to make decisions about which people they're going to stop and which people they aren't. The police almost never arrest people driving 27 miles per hour.
The same goes for Scripture. There are passages in Scripture that are quite strict, like women should cover their heads and men shouldn't grow their hair long, and you sometimes have to make decision: Are these really the highest priority texts, or are there others that might take higher priority?
Sometimes laws disagree with each other. Sometimes portions of Scripture dispute one another. None of this means that everything is relative. Of course, they're still the Scriptures, and they're still the law. But what it does mean is that we have to take into account that there is a kind of decision-making process that we all engage in.
Take the current situation in the city of Fayetteville around the enforcement of laws for marijuana. We know that as a state, we've decided that some uses and some possession of marijuana isn't actually illegal at all. If you are growing it for medicine and have the right license, you actually can make a lot of money legally growing pot.
Meanwhile, if you possess a small amount just for personal use, you might get a slap on the wrist. On the other hand, if you have more, and somebody thinks you might be selling it, then you can get a misdemeanor or felony. You'd think such laws would be clear, even if economically unjust.
However, we now wonder if Fayetteville police and prosecutors are enforcing this at different levels, arresting more African-Americans who possess marijuana than other populations within our city. That is a form of injustice most of us would agree shouldn't be part of police practice.
So it makes a lot of sense that if city leaders are going to address this kind of racial disparity, they would ask prosecutors and police officers to think dialogically about the law itself. It would go like this: Yes, it's currently illegal to have marijuana in some cases. But we're just not going to prioritize possession of marijuana as a crime, in the same way we aren't prioritizing arresting people who are driving 2 miles over the speed limit.
Similarly, prosecutors use their discretion all of the time, when to move a case forward for prosecution and when not to. So in this case they'd exercise that discretion more frequently.
I am thankful to city leaders who have spoken out publicly about this and offered us leadership. It would seem to make a lot of sense that elected leaders would give us a clear kind of accounting.
In the meantime, those of us that are pastors will also try to do the same thing with Scripture, helping each of us realize we're making choices all of the time.
What can pastors and the city share, whether it is interpretation of Scripture or the law? In both instances, the final rule is the rule of justice and love.
The Rev. Clint Schnekloth is lead pastor at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Fayetteville. He blogs at www.patheos.com/blogs/clintschnekloth or email him at perichoresis2002@mac.com.
NAN Religion on 07/13/2019