Victimized

South Africa has a huge problem with crime. The country has great numbers of unemployed people, and they are hungry and desperate. There are also countless souls addicted to various substances, and they too will do anything to feed their habit. None of this excuses crime; it’s just an observation on the state of things. Hunger and substance abuse aren't the only reasons behind crime, but they play a significant role.

I knew all this when I arrived here and I see it in the headlines every day. I try to be vigilant, to watch my back wherever I go, but I often wondered if I would make it an entire year without being victimized. I didn’t.

Yesterday my laptop was stolen. From a homeless center. While I was in the next room teaching a Bible study. My car was vandalized a few years ago, and just like back then, I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. The interesting thing is, the Bible study was on Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, and in particular His instruction to turn the other cheek and love our enemies.

I was trying hard to do that, but I must confess: I was (to quote Larry the Cable Guy) “madder than a one-legged waitress at the IHOP.” Like Linus’s security blanket, my laptop was familiar and comfortable and it went everywhere with me. It’s not that I’m into high-tech gadgetry – it’s just that it was the storehouse for a lot of work and photos and music that were dear to me. Fortunately I had run a backup to an external drive in September, so I won’t lose too much information.

Really, the most painful part of all this is the circumstances under which it happened. I’m 99 percent sure I know who did it, a guy who had been coming to the shelter for the past week or so. He was helping out in the kitchen and seemed like a nice enough guy, but he was also extremely quiet and no one really knew much about him. In hindsight, I think he had been watching me work on Thursday morning, which meant he saw me put the laptop in my backpack and store the pack under a desk and behind a chair. The thief only took the laptop, so whoever took it knew exactly where to look for it.

On the positive side, a lot of the other homeless and “street people” at the shelter were livid and have rallied around me. One guy even vowed that I would see the thief again, "when he’s in the hospital.” (I had to remind this fellow about the loving-your-enemy thing we had just discussed.)

The bigger issue here is the same thing that’s at the heart of every crime and conflict, the source of all the bad news we hear about on a daily basis. It’s the age-old attitude of “me first.” Somebody wants something for themselves, because self is who every one of us naturally seeks to serve. It’s simply played out in various ways through every individual, some worse than in others.

Jesus turned that thinking on its head and said God’s design for living is “God first, others first.” As Matthew recorded it, “Jesus replied, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22: 37-39).

In the wake of such a disheartening turn of events, I pray that my actions will match my profession to believe this.