As I mentioned in a previous blog, when we lived in Valdosta, Georgia, we started a Bible study in our home for the single GIs who were stationed at Moody AFB. One of our regular attendees was Rodney. He became a good friend. He enjoyed playing with the kids or serenading little Jamie on his guitar. Rodney was also a member of our church and he was just as faithful in his church attendance.
One particular Wednesday evening, our family was heading out the door to go to church when the phone rang. Floyd said, “I’ll grab the phone while you get the kids in the car.” This was before caller ID or relentless telephone solicitors who annoyed you with chronic sales calls all evening. So Floyd thought it might be someone who actually needed to talk to us.
I buckled Toby into the backseat and secured Jamie into her car seat. (This was also before the law required a two year old to be in a car seat.) When Floyd finally jumped into the car, he said, “That was Rodney. He’s been arrested and wanted to know if we could post bond for him. It’s $250. He said he’ll pay us back on payday.”
“Are we doing it after church or right now?”
Floyd cranked the car and we took off. “We’re doing it right now. It’s going to take us awhile to scrounge up $250.” I discovered why. We had to go to more than one ATM because our withdrawal limit was only $100. (That was per ATM; not per account.) If the bank had still been open, we could have walked in and just written a check. We had the money in our account. Our problem was getting it out. So we drove from ATM to ATM until we’d accrued $250; then we went and bailed Rodney out of jail. Since it took us a couple of hours, we missed church that night. Floyd asked Rodney what happened and what prompted him to call us.
Rodney said, “I made a u-turn and got clobbered. Then I didn’t realize that my car insurance had lapsed, so I got arrested for driving without insurance. (That’s a definite no-no in Georgia. They are very hard on uninsured motorists.) And the reason I called you guys is because you were the only ones I thought would bail me out tonight.”
Our pastor told us later that we should have let him sit in jail because church comes first. And he wasn’t the only one that thought that way. We found out that Rodney was right. We were the only ones who would have bailed him out. And he did pay us back on payday.
If we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, how can we declare that a faithful brother in Christ should spend the night in jail because church comes first? Is that really loving our neighbor as we love ourselves? And letting a GI sit in jail all night could have serious repercussions for him when he missed work the next day. That would make him AWOL (Absent Without Leave).
A number of people at our church thought that we shouldn’t have missed church to bail a brother in Christ out of jail. But I would want someone to love me that much.