Paul Before Agrippa

In today's passage, Festus is at his wit's end over what to do with Paul. On one hand, Festus states that "the whole Jewish community has petitioned me about him in Jerusalem and here in Caesarea, shouting that he ought not to live any longer." However, on the other hand, Fetus "found he had done nothing deserving of death, but because he made his appeal to the Emperor I decided to send him to Rome."

Festus is lost and has no idea what move to make next, so he pleads with Agrippa to help him out. I think from yesterday's passage, King Agrippa was curious to meet Paul and was a little intrigued by this sticky predicament Paul had presented. Can you condemn an innocent man because one community hated and wanted to kill him over his beliefs. It's very eerie to how close this is like to Jesus's trial before Pilate. And Festus is doing something very similar as Pilate did. I feel like he trying to push off this decision what to do with Paul because he didn't want the blood of an innocent man on his hands. So he's pushing it off to Agrippa in way by "asking" what he should do, just so he can have someone to point a finger to if this later blew up in his face. But in a sad way, if I was Festus's shoes, I think I may do the same thing. I mean it's obvious that Paul was innocent, and the right thing is to let him out, but then you'd have an angry mob of people out their against you. As a person of power, that is not a good thing to have.

There are three choices here: the righteous thing to do, the safe thing to, and the cop-out way to go. Choice One, the righteous thing to do, is let the innocent man go because it's the right thing to do. Choice Two, the safe choice, is to do nothing and hope that the problem will solve itself or the anger of the Jews will soon dissipate, so you don't have to do anything. Choice Three, the cop-out way, is to cave into the people's demand by sacrificing the life of an one man to appease an angry mob. Not the best of choices, but you save face. Plus you won't have lots of angry people demanding for your head instead. Festus probably knows that he should follow with Choice One, but he doesn't want that burden of guilt on his head. Choice Three doesn't seem right either, so he's left with Choice Two, but he running out of time.

When I think about us and try to apply this to our lives in today's world, it's sort of like when we have to juggle with all the peer pressure in dealing with the people that we meet daily in our lives. Non-Christians, whether they're friends or foes, who don't understand a Christian's life or when we come across a temptation or even when we have to deal with our sins. What do we do? Choice One, do the righteous thing according the Gospel, which is to pray, repent, and to look to Christ; Choice Two would be to avoid/run away from dealing with our sins or turning an apathetic eye to it instead. Finally, Choice Three would be to cave into whatever is tempting you or causing you to sin.

I had a hard time at first in what today's passage was saying to me, but the more I thought about it, this was what I came up with. Out of the three choices, I'd tend to do Choice Two. I know we all want to do Choice One and reject Choice Three because it's the worst out of all three. But truthfully, Choice Two is just as bad or maybe worse because we as Christian know better than to turn the other way.