🎧 Listen to this lesson:
One day a drunken man got into his automobile, started driving in the wrong direction, and had a head-on collision with a party in another car. In this accident, a young eighteen-year-old girl was killed. The family of this girl sued the man and won $1.5 million in the lawsuit.
Instead of taking the money the family settled for $936. The reason was that they wanted the man to pay this sum in a specific manner. They wanted the man who had been drunk to remember what he had done. He was to write out a check, in the name of the girl he had killed, for one dollar each week and send it to the family. You would think that a settlement of $936 would be a good deal in the light of $1.5 million. At first paying the one dollar a week was easy, but after a while, writing a check in the name of the girl he had killed began to dominate his thinking. Every week he went into depression, thinking about the girl he had killed.
After years of this, he finally quit making the payments. The family took him back to court and ordered him to resume making payments. In the last six or seven years, he quit making payments four or five times. However, each time he was taken back to court and again made to resume making payments.
The family said they were not angry anymore, but they just wanted to remind him of what he had done.
If you think about it, that family was in bondage as well as the man making the payments. Every week they got a check that reminded them of their loss, so in a sense, they couldn't put their daughter's death behind them either.
That man is now suing the family for what he calls "cruel and unusual punishment." He says, "This is killing me! It's destroying my life! I can never put the past behind me and go on with my life."
In light of this story, I have met a lot of Christians who feel they are under the same kind of judgment. They were told "Jesus paid it all," but still feel as if they have to make a weekly payment of religious duties, or God will not accept them.