I am glad to see so many friends sharing and reacting to the story of Love Wins being stopped from feeding hungry people in Raleigh.

You are probably wondering what you can do to help. There is a tried and true way to overcome such injustice. There are four steps:

1. Determine if there is injustice – collect the facts
2. Negotiation – dialogue with those in power and try to convince them to change
3. Self-purification – training, spiritual preparation
4. Direct action – create a crisis situation where negotiation can be effective

Since it is unclear what ordinance was ‘violated’ we are at step 1. This means we should all email and call the mayor, our city council member, and the council member at large. LW has given us that info here: http://lovewins.info/2013/08/feeding-homeless-apparently-illegal-in-raleigh-nc/

When you contact them:

1. Be polite and respectful. Show love to all. Even opponents. Hugh at Love Wins will have an easier time negotiating with them if they have had a lot of people showing them respect. He will have a much harder time if a lot of people have been rude to them.
2. Don’t make assumptions or accusations. Stick to the facts. All we know for sure is the police stopped Love Wins from giving out Bojangles biscuits and coffee to people on the sidewalk near Moore Square. Love Wins has been doing this every weekend for 6 years with no problem. Saturday the police stopped them.
3. Ask for clarification. The folks we are contacting do answer to us. It is appropriate to respectfully ask for an explanation of their actions. The explanation they give will be important for what happens next. They need to know that we insist on an actual explanation. If enough of us ask (respectfully and firmly), they are more likely to give serious thought to how they answer.

We live in a weird culture where we celebrate action (of certain varieties) in our entertainment, but in real life we usually default to inaction. This creates an all-or-nothing dynamic which is unhelpful when measured response is called for (measured response is almost always called for). You may feel like calling and emailing aren’t enough, but at this stage they are exactly what is needed. Let’s get behind Hugh and Love Wins and make sure our elected officials know we insist on an explanation.

Call now. Email now. And don’t use a form email. Take 5 minutes and write your own. It’s okay to send the same email to each person, but make the language your own.

Thomas Aquinas wrote about the Gospel as the New Law in his Summa Theologica (I-II, Q.108, 1):

“There are works which are not necessarily opposed to, or in keeping with faith that works through love. Such works are not prescribed or forbidden in the New Law, by virtue of its primitive institution; but have been left by the Lawgiver, i.e., Christ, to the discretion of each individual. And so to each one it is free to decide what he should do or avoid; and to each superior, to direct his subjects in such matters as regards what they must do or avoid. Wherefore also in this respect the Gospel is called the law of liberty: since the Old Law decided many points and left few to man to decide as he chose.”

This means that what is not specifically commanded or forbidden by the teachings of Jesus are left up to the individual or the individual community to decide. They are not referred back to the Old Law, because the New does not fill in the gaps left by the Old or appeal to the Old where it remains silent. Silence in the New Law means freedom for those in Christ.

Aquinas goes on:

“He acts freely who acts of his own accord. Now man does of his own accord that which he does from a habit that is suitable to his nature: since a habit inclines one as a second nature. If, however, a habit be in opposition to nature, man would not act according to his nature, but according to some corruption affecting that nature. Since then the grace of the Holy Spirit is like an interior habit bestowed on us and inclining us to act aright, it makes us do freely those things that are becoming to grace, and shun what is opposed to it.”

Our own nature is corrupted (by the Fall) and the habits that we live by incline us accordingly. The Holy Spirit dwells in us though, directing our habits, not toward our nature, but toward grace. The Holy Spirit does not repair the old human by the old law. The Holy Spirit creates a New Human by the New Law. The New Person lives by “the perfect law that gives freedom” (James 1.25).

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Let us live only by his law of liberty.