With years of driving under my (seat)belt, I have often contemplated the potential consequences of speeding. One day I realized something…
I have mistakenly thought that if I don’t speed as fast as other people then I am fine.
If I let all the fast people super speed and I speed just a little bit then the police will pull over the super speeders and I’ll be all good to putz along semi-fast but not crazy fast.
But that’s misguided thinking. Am I not speeding, too?
If I am speeding then I am guilty of speeding. The police could rightly pull me over and give me a speeding ticket. I am sure if that happened then I would be like, “Hey! That’s not fair! Did you not see all those other people speeding faster than I was!? Why don’t you ticket them!”
I would feel indignant but still be guilty of the crime. It would seem unfair, but it would be totally fair. Do I know that I am doing something wrong? Yes. Does it matter that other people are doing something wrong too? Yes but No – because in this case it doesn’t really matter what the other people do, it matters what I do.
That’s a lot like sin and sinning.
When it comes to sinning I can have the same mistaken thinking – thinking that if I just don’t sin as badly as I think others are sinning then I am pretty much fine.
Is it really that bad if I commit all these “measly” sins when I see other people committing really big sins?
I could be tempted to think, “No, it’s not that bad.” But I’d be wrong. A sin is a sin is a sin (woah that’s almost a palidrome!! …but that’s besides the point).
I must remove the wooden beam from my own eye before I judge the splinters of another. (cf. Mt 7:3-5)
If I sin that’s on me. I have no right to feel indignant when I am utterly guilty. With God it’s personal. He’s not gonna look around and say, “Mo, your sins aren’t as bad as Persons A, B, and C over here so it’s all cool.” No!
God’s going to feel sad that I have made Him sad because I have done something that I know He doesn’t want me to do. It especially hurts when I know that it is wrong and do it anyways, even repeatedly. Essentially I speed everyday — speeding away from God the more I sin.
God has the right path for me and I just need to take it. I don’t need to look around and see what other people are doing or not doing. I just have to know what is right and do it! To get lulled into the false security of “well, what I’m doing is not that bad” is the devil’s work. If I believe in that untruth the devil sucks me farther away from The Truth.
So if you ever get pulled over for speeding and start to feel annoyed that you were picked for a ticket when you know other people were going faster than you – just remember: you are guilty. You were the one who chose to break the rules. Sure there is a scale of “less bad” when it comes to breaking the law, but at the end of the day you knew what was right and you chose wrong. It’s not the police officer’s fault for calling you out on it. You should choose right for the right that it is, not the comparison of how wrong it is on an imaginary comparison scale. And then you should thank the police officer for reminding you that you are called to do better and be better.
After all …a sin is a sin is a…
Give God Your Yes 