Together a Light in the Darkness By Deputy J Dillard
The Bible is about community. Since the very beginning of everything, God was triune; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The trinity is, was, and will be the model God intended. Then God created humankind. Why? So he could be in community with them and they would glorify Him. Then in the Garden of Eden, humankind went rogue. We bought the lie that we didn’t need community, we didn’t need God. God is holding out on us by hogging all of the glory. “For God knows that in the day you eat from it (the Tree of Knowledge), YOU WILL BE LIKE GOD, knowing good and evil.” Ever since human history has been the battle between us being our own god and God calling us back to communion with Him. The rest of the Old Testament shows God’s chosen people, the Israelites, the community of God, bouncing back and forth between their own glory and God’s glory. Since God’s people couldn’t earn their way to communion with God, God came and earned it for us through the Son, Jesus.
Even then, Jesus didn’t do it alone. Jesus said multiple times that he only does what he sees the Father do and He only says what He hears the Father say. Not only did Jesus do his ministry with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but he also performed his ministry with twelve unassuming guys including a fisherman named Simon Peter who Jesus said was the Rock He would build his church on and the gates of hell wouldn’t ’overcome it. Then Jesus ascended to the Father leaving the remaining eleven to work with the Holy Spirit to spread the good news of the Kingdom of God. Beginning with those eleven in community with God, thousands of years later on a different spot on the globe, here we are a part of God’s community. We continue to fight the daily battle between individualism and being God’s representation to a broken and fallen world. Going at it alone was never the plan. The Kingdom has always been about God and is bigger than anyone, including us.
Law Enforcement is a little microcosm of the Kingdom. Law Enforcement has been a staple in every town, city, and country in the civilized world. People of all nations and tribes with the same calling to serve and protect. Even though our community, badges, and even training may differ, the calling is always the same. Just like the church, some have positive contributions to the call and some have damaged the law enforcement community forever. In the church, we’ve seen pastors who try to be the example of spiritual health and strength to their congregation, put out what they want people to see while bottling up what’s going on in their heart. That’s where sin creeps in and takes pastors off the front line the church is weaker for it. In Law Enforcement, we’ve seen all too many times, officers put out the tough facade, while their mental, physical, and spiritual health deteriorate. Now we are seeing a trend of line of duty deaths go down while police suicides are on the rise.
The plan for the Kingdom was always through community. Our communion with God, and the community of the body of Christ, the church, boldly marching into the darkness so that our “light may shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”