Romans 13:10 (NLT)
10 Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the
requirements of God’s law.
Love has no design to do wrong to others. In loving
others we fulfill the requirements of God’s law in the treatment of others,
because we do no wrong.
Canadian journalist Bronwyn Drainie in My Jerusalem:
Secular Adventures in the Holy City (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1994), p. 220;
describes the surprising behavior of a Haredi woman—an ultra-orthodox Jew—at a
Jerusalem street market. Drainie says:
The most heroic single act I heard of during my two years
in Jerusalem involved a Haredi woman. At the Mahane Yehuda one day, the Jewish
street market just around the corner from my boys' school, an Arab terrorist
drew a knife among the throng of shoppers and managed to stab two young men
before fleeing for his life. The crowd of Israelis, incensed, began running
after him, a number of them drawing pistols as they ran. The Arab darted across
the street, running straight towards a Haredi woman of 40 who was standing at a
bus-stop. Her name was Bella Freund.
In a trice she sized up what was happening. She stepped
directly into the Arab's path and tripped him so that he fell to the ground,
and she threw herself on top of him to protect him. The crowd kicked her, spat
on her, threatened her with their guns, but they could not loosen her hold on
the Arab, and she lay there until the police arrived to take him into custody.
Later, when the reporters got to her, Bella Freund said:
"It was very simple. If you can save a life, you do it." Her hatred
of Arabs, her lifelong conditioning never to touch a man who wasn't her
husband, all of it was set aside in a split-second of truth. "I could not
see a helpless man killed by a mob, whatever he had done," she said.
"That's not the way I was brought up."
In an instance Mahane Yehuda took everything she believed
about religion and replaced it with love. It was a love for life that motivated
her to save this man who had hurt others. She gave him the chance to be justly
tried instead of being condemned by an outraged mob. Her love outweighed her
beliefs and gave this man a chance to live and a chance to possibly change his
ways of thinking too.
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