To recap the story.  Jim’s landlord, Ted, has treated him unfairly.  He violated their contract and the law.  If you haven’t read the first part, please click here to do so: Ethical Question: The Landlord.

How should Jim respond? Should he pay the landlord’s fraudulent fees and forgive him?  Should he stand up to the landlord on principle, in the name of the poor and oppressed?

Is there another way?

This situation isn’t so hypothetical.  We moved out of our apartment on February 9 and on May 1 our landlord finally sent us an e-mail saying that he was keeping the deposit and billing us for an additional $289.

In the end, we felt a response like this was the best:

Dear Ted,

It’s not in me to argue with you about this.  I believe that Jesus wants us to live a life free of these kinds of conflicts and a money-driven society.

I apologize for acting hostile towards you in the past.  Please forgive me.

I recently found out that Ohio state law says that a landlord only has 30 days to return a tenant’s security deposit or give some type of assessment.  Because of that law, I would be entitled to sue you for nearly $2,000.

But I don’t want to do that.  If you’ll accept it, I forgive you for violating our contract and the law, and for treating me rudely and disrespectfully.

I sincerely apologize for the damage that I caused to the apartment, and I would have gladly paid the water bills had I been aware of them when I was your tenant.

If you think that you’re entitled to the deposit, please keep it.  But I’ve sold all of my possessions and I don’t have any more money to give you.

It isn’t much, but I hope my act of mercy and forgiveness demonstrates my commitment to principles that are not of this world.  To me they are more important than the money that I could get.

I hope that God continues to bless your business,

Jim

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“But I tell you, do not resist an evil person.  If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.  If someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.” Matthew 5:39-40.

As ndawg already quoted.

As much as I hated it, we knew what we should do.  We should, as ndawg said, forgive no matter what the cost, and even rejoice when the cost to us is higher.

“For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you.” Matthew 6:14.

But there is also a practical side.  The truth is that we don’t have $289 to give him, and just “making it go away” didn’t seem right either.

To us, the important thing was to first demonstrate the love of Jesus, and second solve the problem.

Just forgiving our landlord wasn’t enough.

In a practical sense, to solve the problem we had to demonstrate that it was us who had been wronged.  Otherwise his response would clearly have been, “thanks for forgiving me of nothing, that’ll be $289 please.”

In this way we could demonstrate the love of Jesus and protect others.  At the very least we’ve notified him that what he’s doing is wrong, and refused to assist him (via more money) in his unlawful contracts with other tenants.

This probably isn’t the best response, but it was the only one that we could come up with that seemed to work.

Hopefully telling the landlord how we were wronged wasn’t an arrogant thing to do.  Hopefully he accepts this resolution and doesn’t respond by saying, ‘that’ll be $289’.

Hopefully by doing our best to act in love, God will bless us and keep us from harm.

“In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16.

Clayton, my gut instinct was with you.  I tried to find a reasonable argument to sue him and then use the money for others.  Unfortunately, despite my greatest endeavors I could not find John Stuart Mill in the bible, only Jesus and some other guys.

We struggled with this decision greatly.  Hopefully it works out.

Was this the best response?  Please leave your thoughts below.