Hypotheticals

Hypothetical Situation #1: You are driving down the road, when traffic slows to a stop at a red light. The person behind you, driving a truck and pulling a horse trailer, fails to slow down and rear-ends your car, doing non-negligible but non-critical damage to the read of your car. You proceed to do all the usuals, trading contact and insurance information, and only later find out that their insurance had lapsed. What do you do?

1. Talk to the person, and try to arrange for their reparations of your car.
2. Talk to the police and/or a lawyer and begin some form of legal action to recover damages.
3. Let it drop, since the damage is no-critical.

Hypothetical Situation #2: Same as the above case, with the exception that the person who rear-ended your car is not reachable (phones disconnected or unanswered, etc.). What do you do?

1. Talk to the police and/or a lawyer and begin some form of legal action to recover damages.
2. Let it drop, since the damage is no-critical.

Hypothetical Situation #3: You enter into a business relationship with a friend, investing a fair amount of money into the venture. As time goes by, you begin to realize that your friend was a poor choice as business partner and discover that bad management and actions of dubious legality are resulting in the total loss of your investment. What do you do?

1. Talk to your friend and either force him to straighten up or vacate the arrangement.
2. You cease your part in the business.
3. You begin legal action to possibly recover some or all of your lost investment.

Hypothetical Situation #4: Same as case #3, with the exception that the business partner is not a friend, but simply a partner. Same choices as above.

Hypothetical Situation #5: You discover, round about, that someone or someones at work have been talking badly about you - rumors, gossip, exaggerations, half-truths and outright lies which are both malicious and damaging to you personally and professionally. You quickly discover who has been doing this. What do you do?

1. Vocally denounce the rumors that have spread and try to clear your name.
2. Speak to the person/people who have initiated this to find out why they are doing this and try to get them to stop.
3. Quietly speak to your boss and/or their boss to clarify the matter and defend yourself.
4. Ignore the matter, though hurtful, and trust that your life will speak for itself.

Multiple answers for each question are allowed.

I propose these hypothetical situations as a continuation of the discussion begun in my previous post on Christianity and indemnification. "Defend" in the previous post seemed to be more narrowly defined by readers than I had intended. A good discussion was had on gun ownership, but I intended the topic to be a broad discussion of defense of self, possessions, honor, etc. What does it mean in our daily lives to turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile? (Luke 6:27-36, Matthew 5:39-41) As to the above questions, I don't know that I have good answers - even though several have not been "hypothetical" in my life. As before, I have to ask myself why pursuit of justice ends and vengeance begins. Where is my forgiveness? Where does the legal system that we have, and the protections it allows - which are, mind you, ordained and allowed by Jehovah - cross the boundary of righteous behavior?

Thoughts?

Tags: Punishment, Retribution, Forgiveness, Forgetfulness, Repentance, Justice, Vengeance, Indemnification