As Christians, we often find ourselves in the difficult position of having to ‘love our enemies’ when suffering mistreatment. And if that wasn’t bad enough, we are then told to ‘pray for those who persecute you’ (Matthew 5:44).

In this verse, Jesus was talking about attitude and how we are to personally respond when experiencing mistreatment.

So this leads to the interesting story in London, England, of a Christian gospel singer, Harmonie London, who was recently told by a volunteer police officer that she was not allowed to sing gospel music in public.

The police officer told Harmonie she was only allowed to sing on church property then the officer stuck out her tongue as she walked away.

The whole incident was filmed and then Harmonie posted it on social media.

Harmonie had been singing at this spot for months and the Oxford street location where she was performing had been designated a Busker zone by the local city council, allowing people to sing.

But the Daily Mail is reporting that there is much more to the story. In fact, six police officers were involved and they had actually threatened to arrest Harmonie and seize her equipment if she didn’t stop what she was legally allowed to do.

Others passing by also started videoing this whole incident, and you can see people asking the police why they weren’t actually doing some ‘real’ police work like ‘catching murderers, rapists, killers’ instead of bullying a Christian gospel singer.

One of the male police officers sarcastically responded with ‘In which case next time I hear about a murder, I’ll go to it.’ According to the Daily Mail, there had been several reported incidents of crime on Oxford street that same day.

Incredibly the whole police incident started while Harmonie was singing ‘Amazing Grace’.

Even though she had the right to be there, Harmonie complied and packed up her equipment and left.

But did Harmonie do the right thing by posting the videos online and challenging the behaviour of the police officers.

I believe so.

In the Book of Acts, a similar incident took place in Thyatira after the Apostle Paul had cast the spirit of python out of a slave girl.

The owners of the slave girl were so outraged by their loss of revenue that they hauled Paul and Silas before the local magistrates who ordered them to be beaten and thrown in jail over night.

However, Paul and Silas were both Roman citizens and under Roman law, they could not be beaten without a trial. And equally important they had to be tried in a Roman court.

The Thyatira magistrates who had violated both these provisions were terrified when they found out about their Roman citizenship.

When the magistrates released Paul and Silas from prison the next day, the two refused to leave until the magistrates personally visited them, apologized, and escorted them out of the prison (Acts 16:37-39).

Paul and Silas demanded that the magistrates be held accountable for their illegal actions.

And though there was no social media in Paul’s day that story made it to print and has been read arguably billions of times.

In like manner, Scotland Yard has since issued an apology to Harmonie about the whole incident and is now investigating the officers involved.

Over the years, people have often criticized the Bible stating that in the Old Testament, it was an eye for an eye and tooth for tooth which seems to contradict the New Testament, where Jesus spoke of loving your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:28-31).

But, there is one critical difference.

The Old Testament was the law given to the nation of Israel. It was speaking of the government’s response to crime, while Jesus was speaking of a personal response.

Personally, for the sake of our own well-being, we have to forgive, but the government still has to hand out justice.

In my very first podcast, I did an overview of Israel’s legal system and specifically the Old Testament eye for an eye law, and how if we understand it correctly actually means you love your neighbor as yourself.