“It doesn’t matter to me what you have done, only what you do now.”
“But I'm a criminal!”
“You were a criminal. And what you did, you did to survive.”
“It was still wrong, George, and you can’t just erase it. Even with all the goodwill in the world.” She may have lost her need for restraint, but she had to make him understand. Why did he insist on minimizing her past?
“And there are people who will always hold that against you.” He shook his head. “We all make mistakes. And these people? They have no higher morals than anyone else. Their depravity only looks different from their point of view. But rather than do it for survival, they do it for greed.”
It’s just like humans to create a man-made measure of depravity, isn’t it? A sliding scale that differentiates motivation based on so many factors: social acceptance, race, religion, and wealth, among others. Even the Bible says that “people do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his appetite when he is hungry, but if he is caught, he will pay sevenfold…” (Proverbs 6:30-32, ESV) We like to manufacture our own standards and force others to abide by them. This creates a slippery slope of enablement through the use of wealth and power to alter the status quo at the whim of those privileged enough to be considered the elite. Whether the “elite” is leadership, influencers, or society, it doesn’t matter; someone dictates change and the rest follow.
Meenah is forced into a society that will judge her rather than seek to understand her need to survive. They don’t necessarily judge her for past criminal activity, but for her sudden and unprecedented entrance into a setting where she does not belong. This is not the status quo. Criminals do not get a free pass into high society, and respectable men do not marry so low when there is an abundance of qualified brides at their disposal. It is simply that way, and so it must remain until someone highly esteemed deems otherwise and garners enough followers to enact a change.
Going back to the verse in Proverbs, we see that the punishment is the same for every human being - or at least it should be. This means God puts us all on the same level, which is confirmed in Acts when Peter tells us that God shows no partiality. In fact, He extends the same grace to everyone, a free pass out of sin (to which we are all predisposed) and into freedom. So, why do we not accept that we are all equals in God’s eyes, simply walking different paths on the earth, serving different purposes, until our return home?
This freedom is something George hopes to show Meenah, having encountered it himself. And though he wishes he could show it to everyone, he sees in her a heart not yet wholly calloused by the pain of her past, and it gives him hope - hope that she can take his legacy and multiply it to the people he was unable to reach. And if it just so happens that they find a deeper, truer sense of love along the way, so be it.
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