The Runaway: When to Break a Promise

This is an excerpt from my new book

Messages from Mayberry

Chapter Three

The Runaway:

When to Break a Promise

“Don’t break the rules and don’t break a promise.” Most of us have been hearing such advice as long as we can remember. But sometimes the right and loving thing just isn’t that simple, is it? As Opie says, these issues “sure mix us up.”

Barney finds the squad car parked in front of a fireplug and writes Andy a ticket for breaking the law. Andy decides to deal with his crime by letting Barney play the part of the judge and hear Andy plead his case. By the time Andy has presented all his evidence and the defense rests, Barney has learned a big les- son. What he knows about Andy is more important than what he knows about the parking violation. He knows that Andy is, as he testified, “an honest man and an honest sheriff.” And the more Barney hears, the more he realizes that Andy wouldn’t have knowingly parked the squad car in front of a fire hydrant.

Finding evidence we can use to accuse people of doing wrong isn’t very difficult. But before we write them up or write them off, we need to remember what else we know about a per- son’s character and faithfulness. That doesn’t mean that good people don’t make thoughtless or foolish mistakes. But remembering the good we know about the people in our lives can make us think twice before we throw the book at them.

When Andy goes outside, trying to figure out how his squad car got in front of a fireplug, Opie, standing nearby, voluntarily spills the beans and tells on his friends for pushing the squad car in front of the hydrant. He told on them, he adds, though he had promised not to tell. Andy applauds Opie’s honesty, but tells him never to break a promise, never to go back on his word. Don’t you just know that painting life in such broad strokes is going to backfire on Andy?

The backfire comes when a little boy named George shows up at the Taylor house with Opie. George has run away from home, but refuses to give his full name or reveal where he’s from. And when Andy asks Opie to help him out by telling him who George is, Opie refuses to help because he’s made a promise and, following Andy’s rule, refuses to break it.

A little later, at the courthouse, the sheriff from neighboring Eastmont calls to report a missing little boy, George Foley. The description perfectly matches the runaway George at the Taylor home, so Andy faces the challenge of getting his promise- keeping son’s permission to do his duty as sheriff.

Andy fights this battle in a very thoughtful way—he tries to take away the need for the foolish promise of secrecy. He tries to understand why George has run away from home. By listening to this young cowpoke, Andy learns that George doesn’t like to be bossed around by his parents and believes that the life of a cowboy is free of such order-taking. If George decides for him- self that running away is a bad idea, Andy believes, then there will be no need to keep the promise or the secret.

Maybe we can learn a lesson from this—we won’t have to worry about breaking or keeping promises so much if we will seek to understand and to help others see the wisdom of doing the right thing.

About this time, Barney shows up with a picture he’s drawn of the lost boy. He took down George Foley’s description, consulted a book on police sketches, and drew his picture. But Barney was so caught up in using modern police methods in the search that he didn’t see the real George Foley right in front of him.

We can be so much like Barney, can’t we? We talk so much about reaching people, strategies and programs and classes and all the rest. And we need to do our very best in reaching out to others. But sometimes we get so caught up in the machinery of reaching people that we don’t see the people right under our noses. The people are there. We just need to reach out and touch them.

Andy uses another tool to help George think about what he’s doing. He helps him count the cost of his decision to run away. George faces the hard fact that he can’t carry the 600 sandwiches he’ll need for the long hike to Texas in his wagon. He doesn’t have snowshoes to get him over the mountains either. Young George also begins to see the cost of the many good things he’s running away from, like pork chops and fried apple rings and a game of catch with his dad. George decides that it’s time to break the promise and call home.

Opie, still clinging to the “keep a promise no matter what” philosophy, accuses Andy of breaking his word and letting him down.

Now Andy has the chance to help Opie and us learn some- thing very important about promises. Sometimes we have to break them, not to do something selfish, but to keep a bigger promise.

Jesus said that the greatest commandment, the most important promise we can make to God, is to love Him with all that we are and to love others as we love ourselves. We have to keep these big promises, even if keeping them means breaking some smaller ones.

As Andy teaches Opie, you can’t obey a “no swimming” sign and let a little boy drown. And you can’t keep a promise not to tell about a boy running away when his parents are worried to death and an entire community is looking for him. To keep such promises would not honor God and would not show love for people.

For Christians, life is about keeping our biggest promises, to love God and love others, and praying for wisdom to know when to keep and when to break all lesser commitments. Living by the law of love will make us more faithful followers of Jesus, the kind of people who help runaways find their way home.