(Bill) Give to Caesar what is Caesar's

Indulge (or not, and skip) my confessional.  About an hour ago, I was seething and so mad that my eyes where watering.  We were driving home from church, enjoying a rare open stretch of Blantyre highway, when a policeman walks out into the middle of the road and motions me to pull over with his pristine, white gloves.  I've heard that the police in Malawi are like many forces in Africa, prone to bribery and corruption.  I imagined he was going to inspect paperwork or search for some minor flaw in the car to try to finagle some Kwacha.  Instead, he motioned to the radar gun set up on a tripod under the nearby trees to inform me that I was speeding.  Questionable, but I can't swear I wasn't.  Certainly, I was completely safe (if not conservative) in my speed.  The fine was Kw 5,000.  This sound like a lot, but the conversion is only $12.50.

That didn't stop me from coming unglued, however.  There is a side to me that has a highly developed sense of justice.  I would like to say that this is a good attribute and most of the time, I believe it is.  The dark side of this trait is that when injustice seems to be applied to me, I don't have a proportional response and I can get crazy mad.  This is what has caused me to square up with opposing players in soccer who have just fouled me or a teammate in a dirty way.  This is what will embolden me to pick up a casually discarded piece of trash and hand it back to the owner with a sassy remark about how close the garbage can is nearby.  And this is what caused me to tell the officer that this whole thing was bullshit.  He asked me what I had just said and I repeated my heated profanity.  (For the Grandmas at home, I said this out of the car and out of earshot of the kids.)  Oh yes, I was in full-on Ugly American mode.  I mean, how DARE you pull my nice white family over.  On our way home from church, no less!  We're in this country to HELP you and your people!  

Well, I didn't get arrested.  I might have if I was black or if I was talking to a police officer like that in the States.  Anyway, I got home and Elizabeth helped me cool off.  She knows this side of me and has helped me through to the other side before.

Elizabeth went to lay down with Micah for a rare afternoon nap and I went out in the car to hopefully find the same police officer.  He was still at his suspect traffic stop and as I got out of the car to approach, he watched me warily.  I confessed to him that I was frustrated earlier, but that I was very wrong to be so disrespectful.  I apologized and offered a handshake.  He grabbed my hand in the now familiar Malawian fashion that intimates friendship.  You can practice at home:  grip a hand in a traditional handshake and then pivot to grasp just each other's thumbs and then back to traditional handshake.  If you're really close, you just keep going in this way.  After three such thingies, I was the one to break off.  Maybe I shouldn't have and I could still be standing on the side of the highway kibitzing with my newest friend.

I'm embarrassed and ashamed that I couldn't control my anger and frustration.  Especially in front of my family.  There is way worse kinds of injustice in the world that should demand the best part of my passionate self.  The text for the sermon at church was Matthew 22:15-22.  People are trying to trap Jesus with a question regarding taxes.  Should Jews pay the annual tribute to their Roman occupiers?  If he says yes, then Jesus is apparently assenting to Roman rule.  If he says no, he is a law-breaker.  Both, not cool and could get him arrested.  Jesus says in response, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."  My traffic stop was a tremendous opportunity to practice this teaching.  I could have dispassionately handed over $12.50 and still kept my whole being focused on God and the things that demand the best parts of me.  I only have so much capital in this life to spend and I hope to be  properly focused next time.