When Youth Work meets authority - who do you stand with?
One evening we were called out by a distressed family because their eighteen-year-old son had been arrested on a drunk and disorderly charge and they couldn’t gain access to him.
Two attempts from an agitated father had met with a cold response as the boy was supposed to have been, ‘too drunk to be seen or released’. His father was also concerned, as his son suffered from epilepsy.
This is an extract from my book Gutter Feelings. When it first came out it was called the British 'Cross and the Switchblade' by some - and 'anti Police' by others.
The Team member and the father took the boy straight to the hospital and used a procedure that we knew can be relied on to prove the truth in these cases. Two blood samples were taken, placed in envelopes and signed by the doctor with the date and time. They were then taken to a laboratory which provides an independent service of analysing blood for alcohol content.
One of our workers was called in as I was out. Using the project’s name and his position as youth worker, he was eventually, at 1.30 in the morning, able to obtain his release. He noticed that the young man gave no appearance of being drunk. The boys told him that he had been standing outside a shop with a few of his friends. Because a police car and van were in the road he had walked away along an alley leading to another road. When he was twenty-five yards away from the main road he heard a bottle smash and his mates ran past him; he ran with them. He ran up the ramp leading to a tower block on his own. After a few minutes he came down the ramp and saw the police with his friend. He said he was about eight feet away from the bottom of the ramp when he hopped over into the other path. Then one of the policemen grabbed him and said, ‘You’ re nicked.’ He asked what for, and the policeman said, ‘For being drunk and disorderly and hurling bottles.’
Eventually the case came to court. I heard the usual evidence of the police, which I’ve heard so often against our young people… sick of hearing it ....
‘I noticed, your worship, that his eyes were glazed, his speech slurred, he was unsteady on his eyes feet, he was drunk.’
Normally the court believes the police evidence and there is a guilty verdict. In this case a witness from the laboratory presented the results. The level of alcohol in the blood sample was below the level of detection.
The case was about justice?
Justice had been done.
What do I mean by justice?
And what is the Christian view on these matters?
It is interesting that ‘justice’ is mentioned twenty-six times in the Authorised Version of the Old Testament, but not at all in the New Testament. Many Christians are not aware of biblical teaching all justice because of this. The translators of the A V Bible translator the word ‘justice’ in to ‘ judgement’ in the New Testament. It is only science the modern translations Todays English Version and the New International Version, have translator correctly, that Christians have been given a basis for a return to balanced emphasis on justice.
Debby Kennett, who was the Team Assistant at Mayflower in 1985 from a live evangelical church in Cheam, Surrey.
‘I was brought up to know all about God’s love,’ she said,
‘ but only when I come to the inner city did learn of God’s justice’.
In fact, the Bible stresses justice much more strongly than most Christians are aware. God makes it clear that he rejects our worship and prayer unless we concerned ourselves with in the justice poverty. (See Isaiah 1:!2-17 and Amos 5:21-24.) The whole of Jesus’ ministry commenced with his ‘manifesto’ in Luke 4:18-19:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has chosen me toAll this is justice in action, not just in New Testament days, but also today.
-bring good news to the poor…
-proclaim liberty to the captives…
-bring recovery of sight to the blind…
-set free the oppressed …’
Will you consider it for your manifesto also?
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