Conscience Decision

Underage drinking is a bad idea. I learned this the fun way, by trying it. This is not a story about the evils of underage drinking. This is a story about choices and perspective. Alcohol isn't really a big deal, the way I see it...but, like anything material, it can be problematic for the human soul.
Me and some friends were off work for the day, and decided we wanted to have some fun. A couple of us were twenty-one and the rest of us convinced them to proxy our plans. It was pretty simple and basically harmless. We wanted alcohol because we liked alcohol, and it wasn't going to hurt anybody and we weren't going to get drunk.
So I drove a friend's car to the liquor store and we all chipped in some cash so one of the older guys could go in and get us stuff. We got whiskey, vodka, whiskey, flavored whiskey, and some more whiskey -- enough liquor to knock out an army of overweight bikers. Then, since we wanted to have some girls join in on our fun, we went to Bi-Lo and picked up enough Smirnoff and Mojito to drown the U.S. Olympic swim team. With a trunk and back seat clinking with bottles of liquid happiness, we headed back towards home turf.
We didn't make it out of the Bi-Lo parking lot before we were stopped by a woman on foot. Given our present engagement in overtly illicit behavior, we were all somewhat nervous about people in general. We were all acting exactly like people who are up to no good act -- pretending we weren't doing anything at all, and constantly looking over our shoulders and hiding our faces. For some reason, acting nonchalant makes people act like paranoid schizophrenics rather than normal, law abiding citizens. Still, we stopped the car and rolled down a window.
The woman who stopped us wasn't a police officer, and she wasn't anyone any of us knew. She was just poor. She told us about her starving children and her desperate need of charity. She asked us to buy her a gallon of milk and some bread. Normally, I'd be happy to buy a poor lady milk and bread -- I'm devoting years of my life to studying community development, and I love poor people. My heart went out to that woman, whether or not she was being truthful. I knew I should help her. We all knew we should help her. So we all did the honorable thing and told her we'd love to help except none of us had any money at all, and we were sorry and would pray for her.
If you ever want to feel like a complete wretch, blow all your spending money on liquor and then tell a homeless woman you don't have any money to buy her milk and bread. That's morally on par with corrupt African government officials keeping foreign aid money for themselves. That's like embezzling in a charity organization. It's like stealing from a soup kitchen. Short of killing someone, there's not much you can do that's worse than what we all did. That's how I felt then, and it's how I feel now.
I'd like to write about how we all realized the error of our ways, returned our alcohol, and did penance at a local food bank, all the while with humble, penitent tears in our eyes. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. A few people bailed on the plan when we got back, just because they felt so guilty, but nobody did anything about it. Nobody even said anything about it. Me and some of the guys still drank the stuff we bought and had a good time. We enjoyed ourselves and put out of our minds any thought of the begging homeless woman in the Bi-Lo parking lot.
If only the worst thing I'd done was break the law. Broken rules I can handle. They don't really hurt much, you just have to deal with the consequences. It's the profound agony of having silenced your own conscience that is absolutely impossible to face. There's no slap on the wrist for that. In fact, there are no consequences at all. Just that gut-wrenching, empty feeling where you know you're the scum of the earth. Acting diametrically against what you know to be right and good, and following through to the end, doing exactly what you always wanted most not to do...becoming what you hate...that's what I did that day.
I say all this not to advertise my bad behavior, but as a warning to myself and to anyone who reads this. Do not play with darkness. Make wise choices that won't put you in morally and spiritually compromising situations.
And, above all, it's never too early or too late to change course and do what you know you should.
"No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."
1 Corinthians 10:13