Be Holy as I am Holy

Be Holy as I am Holy
LEVITICUS : 19: 1- 18

Today’s newspaper reports on the release from a detention center in Iraq of a twenty-seven-year-old man, after eighteen months there. He was given a letter to say that his case had been concluded and the occupation authorities had decided he needed to be released. He is among 90,000 detainees who have been freed. One of them comments on the way he, an apparently innocent guy, was thrown into prison and lost his job, how his family went hungry, and how they (people in general, I think) have refused him a job when he got out. His friends are afraid to associate with him in case he really is guilty, or the powers-that-be think he is, or he has become a Western agent, or he has now signed on to work for a militia, and lest in connection with any of these possibilities they are then assumed to be his associates. In seeking to bring order in Iraq, we had to take steps to confine people who might be contributing to disorder, but what sort of priorities should we have in seeking to care for people who are innocent until proved guilty?...