Nobody Sent the Tow Truck
"Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap." — Galatians 6:7
Fifteen Minutes
Continue the illustration.
A student needs to drop off some papers to a friend studying on campus. It is late at night. The restaurant is closed. The lot is completely empty. The building where his friend is studying is a few minutes' walk away.
So he pulls in, crosses the street, hands over the papers, and comes back.
The whole thing takes under fifteen minutes. And his car is gone.
Every Objection He Has Is Reasonable
Consider his complaints, because they are all genuinely fair.
It was only fifteen minutes. True. The lot was completely empty. True. The restaurant was closed — I wasn't taking anyone's space. True. Nobody was harmed in any way. Also true. And now I'm being charged a fortune to get my car back. True.
Every one of those statements is factually correct. And not one of them changes anything.
Now the important question: who does he complain to?
Not the owner. The owner never sent a truck. He posted a sign years ago and went home. He does not know this student exists and did not participate in what happened.
Not the towing company. They had a legal right, granted in advance, to remove any unauthorized vehicle at any hour. They did precisely what they were entitled to do. They broke no rule.
There is no one to appeal to. The system worked exactly as published.
Whose Fault It Was
It was his own.
He saw the sign. He understood the risk. He made a calculation — it's late, it's empty, nobody will notice, I can get away with it — and the calculation was wrong.
That is the uncomfortable center of this whole chapter. In the spiritual realm, the same reasoning is used constantly:
It's only this once. It's not hurting anyone. Everybody does this. It was a long time ago. Nobody will ever know.
Every one of those may be factually true. None of them affect the legal structure in the slightest.
Harmlessness is not the standard. Authorization is.
Point to Ponder
"It wasn't hurting anyone" and "I had no right to be there" can both be true at the same time. Only one of them determines what happens next.
Verse to Remember
"Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap." — Galatians 6:7
Question to Consider
What have I justified with "it isn't hurting anyone" — and is that actually the standard?
Today's Practice
Write down the justifications you personally use. Everyone has a specific vocabulary for this, and yours will be recognizable to you.
It's not that bad. Everybody does it. I deserve this after what I've been through. It's private. It doesn't affect anyone else. It was a long time ago. I've done worse things than this.
Now write each one out as a full sentence with the thing it protects: "I tell myself ________ about ________."
Then examine each with the parking lot question: is this an argument about harm, or an argument about authorization?
Almost every justification anyone uses is an argument about harm. And harm was never the standard.
Prayer
Father, I have argued with You about whether my choices were hurting anyone, and I have usually won that argument with myself.
But that was never the question. The question was whether I had any right to be there.
Show me where I have been parked somewhere I should not be, and where I have talked myself into it with reasoning that sounded perfectly sensible. I want to stop defending it and start dealing with it. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
He was right about everything except the one thing that mattered.