Bribes

There are many things in Bolivia that are controversial for Christians to participate in. One, about 98% of movies for sale are copied versions- they rent them in the video stores, they sell them on the streets. What do we do about this? Two, it is not illegal to copy books, entire books- textbooks, novels, any book you bring in to a photocopy place will copy and bind it for you for a low fee...I must admit that it is really nice when you can't find English books very easily and when your friends have great Christian books you'd love to read or do a group Bible study on and know this is a fast, easy way to do it. But, is it right?? The third, and potentially most tricky problem is cops asking for bribes. We have gotten stopped by cops various times for various things- usually something we didn't know we were doing wrong. Sometimes, the cop will give you a ticket and you have to go somewhere far away and usually hard to get to, or they will ask you to buy them a coke or newspaper instead (bribe!). Scotty and I have talked numerous times about this problem and realize that it's much more difficult and much more expensive to do the right thing, but we want to do it. We were heading into town to see a movie on Friday night- we get about 3 movies worth watching in the theatre each year. On certain days you can not enter a downtown radius if you have a lisence plate that starts with a certain number. We completely forgot about this rule and remembered just as received the whistle and hard tap on our window from the cop standing at the traffic light we were about to pass through. Both of us were instantly annoyed at ourselves for forgetting something that never changes. We pulled over and got the talk from the cop and he told us how much it was going to cost. Then he pulled out his book of tickets that were conveniently (I think he has this book on purpose) out of tickets. "What do you want to do about this?" he asks. This means- "if you give me some money, I'll let you off". We tell him to ask another cop who's wandering around nearby for one of his tickets. He ignores that and shows us again his empty book of tickets- "what can we do about this?". We tell him that either he needs to give us a ticket or let us turn around and drive back out of the restricted area. He bends over to peer in the window and asks me what I think we should do. I tell him the same thing. He nodds that he's going to let us go and then says something about recognizing his good will, a.k.a., paying him for letting us go. Scotty finally tells him that we are Christians and that we don't believe it's right to do that. Before he can even get the whole sentence out, the guy is waving us on to leave. So, we were thankful that he was merciful with us, but it left me thinking about the inevitability of similar things happening again in the future. Sometimes the situation is not so cut and dry, sometimes the cops are not so nice, sometimes you get pulled over for something you know is not wrong because the cop just wants to get some extra money...what do we do?? We are thinking through all these things and wanting to find answers that glorify the Lord and don't compromise our Christian witness. We want to live in a way that is in line with the Holy Spirits direction of our consciences.