Paying the fine

An article by Don Quixote Comments

I’m at a loss for words today. I have been for several days now. A few days ago Regan Clem wrote a blog about retuning a stolen STOP sign. He ended it with a simple line that struck me more profoundly than anything else that he wrote.

“It looks like I won’t have to pay any fine after all.”

I don’t have the words to describe how simply profound I find that thought to be. There is something so engrained in our culture about just paying the fine and being done with something. The line from the Fisher King rings in my head, “Don’t you just wish that you could� just pay the fine and go home?”

Thankfully most of us are a people of conscience that even if we do something bad there is that tiny black see of guilt that grows inside of us. Guilt is a powerful thing. It’s a physical manifestation of our own moral beliefs. It can keep us awake a night, make us physically ill, makes someone years later mail $2.87 to a grocery store for some candy stolen in youth. The movie 21 Grams is all about guilt, about how it “can crush you to your very bones.”

We carry around this balance sheet. X action is worth Y guilt. If we can pay Y, then we are fine, but until we do, we are saddled with that guilt debt. So we look for ways to pay it, ways to get out from under it. When many people are caught in some wrong, they simply want to know what the fine is so they can just pay it and move on. The Catholic church developed an entire set of indulgences that could be purchased to keep you free from the debt of your actions. We throw money at it rather than take responsibility. Many people would gladly pay any amount as long as they don’t have to take responsibility. I won’t say I did it, but I’ll pay the bill, I’ll do the time.

What we don’t get is that we cannot begin to be free of the debt until we first take ownership of it, until we make it personal. The debt of our sin isn’t something that we can pay. No matter how much we want to, no matter how many good things we try to do to make up for our wrongs, we cannot wipe it clean.

Despite the number of people who play it, we cannot win the goodness game. We cannot do enough good to win. We aren’t good people. I don’t care if you’ve never drank, never smoked, never went with girls who do. I don’t care if you’ve never seen an R-rated movie (with or without simulated violence or sex), I don’t care if you’ve never download an mp3 without paying for it. You’re a sinner. You are a black soul with secrets that you’d love to keep hidden.

I know I am. I do not look forward to a day when I will stand before all of mankind and have my personal private sins and struggles read before them. I cannot run, I cannot hide, I cannot deny the truth.

We are so in over our heads in debt, it cannot be paid by us, it is impossible.
But God knew that. He knew that he was the only would who would ever be able to cover the cost of the sin that we had racked up. It was costly; he had to send his son to die in my stead.

I do not want to be the cause of someone’s death. Some days it seems so much to bare, that a person who wasn’t guilty had to pay my price, had to take my place. If I could just pay the fine myself then I wouldn’t be in his debt, I wouldn’t owe him anything. I wouldn’t have to change, I wouldn’t have to stop what I am doing and how I am living. If I could just pay the fine and go home I could go on as things are, I wouldn’t have to be accountable, I wouldn’t have to have the guilt when I do wrong.

But I cannot, and He did. I am free of that debt, but not free of His debt. It is humbling, it is changing, it is equalizing. Your debt and mine are the same.

Just when all seemed lost, I was saved.

It looks like I won’t have to pay any fine after all.