“Collateral Damage” is a 2002 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is an absolute mess of a movie with ridiculous chases, explosions, and a plot with bigger holes than a slice of Swiss cheese. Even the emotional hook of his son and wife dying as collateral damage in a terrorist attack was not enough to make people connect with the movie. Maybe that’s what drove him into politics as he was elected Governor of California the next year. Talk about collateral damage. Even though it was a bad movie it does serve to illustrate the collateral damage that occurs every day in real life.

Whether in geo-politics or the home, sin brings collateral damage. One horrific example is found in the middle of Saul’s effort to hunt down and kill David. The portrait of Saul shows a pathetic shell of a man sitting around wallowing in self-pity and whining about how nobody loves him because they won’t find David (1 Samuel 22:6-8). What he should have done was repent and embrace God’s chosen one. Verse 8 records Saul saying to his court, “For all of you have conspired against me so that there is no one who informs me when my son makes a covenant with the son of Jesse, and there is none of you who cares about me or informs me that my son has stirred up my servant against me to lie in ambush, as it is this day.”

This prompted a foreigner with no love for Yahweh to reveal that David had gone to the priests for assistance. Saul went to accuse them of treason and ordered his men to execute them. Believers in Yahweh refused so the foreigner, acting on Saul’s order, killed 85 priests (1 Samuel 22:9-18).

But even worse than killing the priests was what he did next, “And he struck Nob the city of the priests with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and infants; also oxen, donkeys, and sheep he struck with the edge of the sword.” (1 Samuel 22:19). They were collateral damage in Saul’s war against David – and God.

Now let’s look inward. What kind of collateral damage has our sin wrought on those around us? Only you can answer that question for yourself, but know this – it has! It’s easy to look at the world around us and see the impact of the sin of others. And we’re so quick to look around and point it out. It’s also easy to see the collateral damage caused by our own sin. But we’re not so quick to look around and point that out. We rather tend to ignore or excuse it. Each of us has sinned in ways that caused harm to others, often in ways that will live on long after we’re gone. Every time we consider temptation and think it won’t hurt anyone – we’re wrong, it does. When we choose to sin we’re causing collateral damage, and, just like Saul, we will answer to God.