I know it’s only a game, but it still bothers me anyway that I received a million credits in fake money because my testimony led someone’s character to be executed for high treason. As it happens, I had been an eyewitness to drunken bragging that ended up costing him a virtual life. When you’re in your cups you don’t want to brag about high treason and your life of raiding and banditry when you’re trying to gain influence in another group, especially not with people who are pretty fierce about law and order.

As it happens, I am pretty fierce about law and order, hostile both to tyranny as well as to anarchy. And this tendency of mine tends to make me rather hostile to those who claim to make a living off of thievery and banditry, as I find that particularly offensive. And in being that strong against such people, apparently I encouraged them to deal harshly with this particular drunk wannabe bandit, whose character was arrested and executed. For my testimony, I was given a million credits, which feels like blood money, and it sits uneasily with me.

Blood money is a dangerous thing. The people of Israel viewed blood money as improper for being in the temple. The wages of theft and prostitution as well were considered tainted and thus unacceptable for divine purposes. Money is tainted by the way in which it is acquired–if it is acquired immorally it taints everyone who touches it. How long does it take for its effects to diminish? It is hard to say. There does not appear to be any godly way in which the wages of sin can be laundered. Those wages of sin must be forgiven; they cannot be cleansed by taking what was gained immorally and putting it to godly use.

Nor is this the only application of blood money. In a metaphorical sense, the offenses we commit against others are debts. I have a friend, or at least someone who claims to think of himself as a friend, who has for seven months reviled me and claimed to care deeply for my friendship while insulting me and claiming that he cannot be in fellowship with me because of some rather harsh words that he has twisted out of context said about someone else. Instead of serving as a genuine peacemaker, he has pronounced sin and judgment while reviling me as a reviler. This sort of thing deeply bothers and frustrates me. I am a prickly person with a fierce tongue–I need genuine peacemakers, not people who curse me while claiming to do so with love. This too is blood money, albeit of a metaphorical kind.

I don’t feel comfortable with blood money. I don’t like it. I dislike profiting from the misery and suffering of others, and I do not accept being judged by those who consider themselves above the standards they enforce on others. It was said of the Pharisees that they neglected the weightier matters of the law, among them justice and mercy. We all come before God as debtors like the United States, owing vastly more than we can ever repay. Therefore, we have no right to treat those who owe us (or others) small debts with harshness, for by the same standard we judge, we will be judged. We therefore ought to practice mercy, for there will be no mercy shown to those who have shown no mercy on others. We could all stand to be a bit more sensitive to others, and a bit more merciful to others, seeing that we are in deep need of mercy ourselves.