Earlier this year we said goodbye to our friend Micah, a former student, FP intern and great friend of Emmanuel - first in Durham, then in Chester-le-Street and latterly part of our friends at Redeemer Church Chester-le-Street. Micah was off to London to join the Metropolitan Police.
This week, he got in touch to let us know how he’s getting on….
Leaving Durham for the big city…
As the beauty of Durham cathedral slowly shrunk in my rear view mirror, I knew that this journey would be the start of a lot of change in my life. Having spent the best part of five years in the North East of England, how could it not? Swapping the cobbled streets of a relatively quiet corner of England for the bustling lanes of one of the world’s most influential cities would always be a challenge – would always take some time to get used to. Little did I appreciate then just how much would change in the four months that would follow, however, with the world I stepped out into in London both looking and feeling remarkably different from the one I had left behind in Durham and Chester-le-Street. But it is not only the world around me that has changed in the past few months; I have too.
My calling to the police
For me, policing is not (nor has it ever been) just a job. Sure, it pays the bills and gives me a worldly sense of “purpose”, something to fill my time and find enjoyment in, but it is both so much more and so much less than that. So much more, because since the age of about five is has been the one main thing I wanted to with my life, and more recently the calling I feel God has on my life (calling being my sense of how I feel God wishes to use me to bring more of his Kingdom to this Earth). So much less, because all too often I have come to realise just how much of a broken profession it can be. In an ironic twist, it was only when I joined the police service three years ago that I realised just how flawed it can be – my boyish idolisation of the popularised “thin blue line” being shattered by the reality I have since been faced with on a near daily basis as I have gone to work.
Who saves?
In no way is the above supposed to indict our police service, or those who have devoted their lives to it. For the police can, and do, perform an incredible public duty on a daily basis, often in the face of great difficulty, with professionalism and courage. But over the past few years, and in particular the past few months since I have moved to London and the recent tragic death of George Floyd (and the police’s inexcusable role in it), I have come to realise that this alone cannot be enough. My all too often wrongly inflated sense of pride when I tell people what I do, being infiltrated more recently by a hint of guilt and even shame – both for the failings of my profession and my previously wrongly held belief in its ability to save people.
Policing and King Nebuchadnezzar…
The book of Daniel in the Old Testament tells the story of a similar destruction of belief that in many ways mirrors my own. For in it, the leader of the world’s most powerful kingdom (King Nebuchadnezzar of the Babylonian Empire) is confronted by his own misplaced reliance on the capabilities of mankind’s systems of governance. In one of his dreams, for example, he witnesses a huge, multi-layered, statue representing numerous great kingdoms of the Earth being shattered by a small rock “cut out, but not by human hands” (2:34), which “became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth” (2:34). The meaning of this curious vision is explained by Daniel to King Nebuchadnezzar to demonstrate how the kingdoms of man (the statue) crumble and are blown away when compared the Kingdom of God (the rock) which, in comparison, “will never be destroyed…but will itself endure forever” (2:44).
‘Surely your God…’
Nebuchadnezzar’s response to this truth is somewhat similar to my own experiences now, as he falls prostrate to the ground proclaiming to Daniel “Surely your God is the God of gods, and the Lord of kings” (2:47). For, it is only in Nebuchadnezzar’s realisation of the weakness and failings of mankind’s own systems, in the destruction of his own mistrust and reliance, that the real solution is revealed to him: Jesus Christ. This is the most important realisation a person could ever have.
Jesus: the perfect balance between justice and forgiveness
It is in the person of Jesus Christ, not the police service, where salvation occurs. For try as we might (with as much self-awareness and well-meaning intentions as we can muster), police officers (including myself) will always make mistakes, approach issues with the wrong mind-set, fail to help (or even hurt or kill) those we swore to protect, and ultimately fall short of the high standard rightfully expected of us. Yet, in Jesus we find the answer: the perfect balance between justice and forgiveness that society (including the police) has never been able to achieve, and which we so desperately long for and are crying out for right now. The amazing thing, however, is that our cries for mercy have already been answered. For Jesus alone will never fail us or forsake us. He alone can love us and give us the desires of our heart, and this is why the comparison of the flawed nature of our police service is so painful to us all right now, and for me especially. For when Jesus hung on a cross centuries after Nebuchadnezzar’s vision, he set a beautiful example of righteousness and salvation that no institution or person could ever follow – but the good news is that all can freely receive it. In Jesus’ death and resurrection the statues in our life are therefore destroyed, but an everlasting Kingdom is established in its wake – a Kingdom that cannot be established by any other means.
Shine in your workplace
So what does that mean for me? Have I wasted my life to work for an institution that will never achieve the very thing I joined hoping, believing, wanting, it to do? Simply put: no. As someone once said to me, “you are a Christian police officer, not just a police officer – there is a difference”, and it is surely in the midst of the darkness of such institutions like the police where we need Christ’s light to shine through Christians. Take encouragement therefore, that if your workplace does not reflect the love of Jesus then that alone is a good enough reason for you to be there, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Jesus spent his entire ministry seeking out those people and places that were furthest from Him, as he knew that these were those who needed Him the most. Therefore, even though the police service is flawed, and it is not the answer, I will not cross to the other side of the road to avoid it. For God can still use it to demonstrate his love to his children, including through the day-to-day successes (or perhaps, more often, failures) of those who work for it who call on Him by name. Such amazing grace!
In us is the spirit of God
Quite how this can happen, and quite how I can personally do that, I have yet to fully work out (and I doubt I ever will). Often, over the past 4 months I have felt horribly powerless and ill-equipped to confront even the darkness in my own heart, let alone that which exists in my place of work. In God’s grace this can only be a good thing, however, as it has reminded me of the need to seek one far greater than myself for the answer to both of these issues. The police service does not need me, for if that was the only thing it got nothing would ever change. But in me, there is also the spirit of God, and the hope of one who - having seen God transform his own life - knows for certain that He can transform the police service as well.
Here I am, send me
This goes some way to explaining the actions of the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 6. For, having been confronted by his own brokenness, but the grace of God in reply, his answer to the question “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” is “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8). Despite my own brokenness, therefore, I have answered the call God has made of my life to pursue justice in the midst an unjust system because I am free in the knowledge that He has already won the victory over both, and it therefore does not depend on me. Why this journey has brought me to London, and what role He has for me to play here, I do not know. But I am excited to find out, all the while consistently being reminded that “Faith is confidence in what we hope for, and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1) – and in Jesus there is one in whom I have great hope, and always will do.