Matthew 5:21-26
“Notice what you notice.” After I read two other translations from hard-back Bibles, I use BibleGateway.com online to look up the daily passage in our church’s preferred ESV translation. In that online rendition, today’s reading is entitled “anger”, tomorrow’s is “lust” and Friday’s reading is “divorce”. Some very timely topics…!! Just wondering how personal those first two might get…!! (Thankfully I get to take a pass on the divorce topic.)
In thinking about taking an adversary to court, Carol and I have been quite fortunate in having had only four evictions in 26+ years of renting houses and apartments. Case #1 and Case #2 went to court and we won both cases. With Case #3 we were just glad to cut our losses and be rid of the penniless tenant. And Case #4 was settled mostly amicably, with the evicted tenants still making payments to settle a major financial gap. In all four cases, we had disgusting, heartbreaking messes to clean up.
I’m reflecting on how far we went with each tenant and why two ended up in court. Could we have been more lenient? Was there room for mercy on our part? The answer to both questions is “no”. Case #1 was a horrific situation, a woman with a history of rental abuse who thought that liberal tenancy laws would protect her. There was no possibility for “coming to terms” before going to court. Carol can best give you the sorry details – an interesting story in itself! We were fortunate to get by with as little loss as we suffered.
Case #2 was a hard-nosed, stubborn, lazy young man who thought his “connections” were enough to win a court battle. They were not. He ended up making two years of court-appointed payments and the debt (including our legal fees) was cleared. And much to our surprise, a few years later he was the one who sought reconciliation with us, fully admitting that he had wronged us and that we had been right to take the issue to court. He had learned from his mistake.
As mentioned already, Case #3 was a lost cause. But Case #4 was interesting, brought on by family and financial problems that resulted in a couple divorcing. We held off on eviction and carried them for quite some time, hoping that our patience on the financial end could help save their marriage. But there were deeply-rooted problems that could not be overcome. In the end we couldn’t save the marriage, but our patience has kept us on friendly relations.
So what to learn from all this? Jesus is correct – no surprise there! Be reconciled, if possible; come to terms quickly with your adversary, if possible; and leave court as a last resort. I’ll be happy to be out of the rental business!
Blessings!
Just a quick comment to note that the ESV translation is readily available right here. Thanks to a nifty plugin from ESV.org, one need only hover over any scripture reference (e.g., Mt 5:21-26), and the ESV translation will conveniently pop up. That pop-up even has a button to play an audio recording of the passage. Or click on any such reference, and that will take you to the whole passage on ESV.org so that you can have ready access to the surrounding context.