As it turns out, woulda been easier to just shrug and keep walking, but I felt obligated to ask him if he realized what he was doing. "Sure," he said, already impatient with his tone. "I'm gassing up my tanks."
I shook my head and shrugged. "With water?"
His head began bobbing up and down. "That's right. Gas at the fuel dock is $3 a gallon, and it's easier and costs less to get what I need right here, right now. So when I'm getting empty, so long as my tanks get full, what difference does it make what goes inside?"
I had a hard time believing what I was hearing, especially from someone who occasionally boasted about being something of a yachtsman.
"Well, I mused, "number one, you just polluted all the good gasoline in your tanks with water and number two, when water gets into your engines they'll both need re-building. And that's if there's anything left worth rebuilding."
My friend's face suddenly turned into a self-righteous scowl. "Sure, that's what you say ... but that's just your interpretation of the instructions, and you've got your own agenda because you work for the guy who just happens to re-build broken engines!" He was thoroughly provoked and quite hostile at this point, and I could tell he resented my uninvited intrusion.
But I wasn't ready to walk away yet. "I guess I just don't understand why you're intentionally trying to ruin your boat, when you already know putting water in your gas tanks is dead-plain wrong. You just can't do it."
"If I ruin my boat what difference is that to you? What I do with my boat is my business mister, and right now I'm kinda wishing you'd butt out and start minding your own."
Then he climbed back on board, fired up both engines, confirmed over his shoulder that he thought I was "Number One" and left two rooster tails blowing from his exhaust pipes as he thundered across the No Wake zone and disappeared across the lake ... presumably showing me his engines did run on tap water, after all.
But the engines were only running on the ounce or two of pure gasoline still left in the fuel lines ... before the carburetors started sucking fresh (but cheap!) cold water into all sixteen red hot cylinders. I didn't stick around to hear the inevitable symphony of exploding cylinder heads, flying pistons and cracking iron engine blocks.
I figured I'd hear from him again soon anyway, when he called to complain about the high cost of marine engine overhauls ... and getting all the pieces put back together again.
---
It's confoundedly easy to feel that we're so smart--- smart enough to justify our actions and argue that thing we're doing is perfectly OK, or rationalize "That's not my situation and anyway that doesn't apply to me," when we know perfectly well we're told not to do that thing we're doing.
Especially when we become distracted, lonely or impatient ... and our attention drifts away from pleasing and honoring God, to satisfying ourselves and honoring what we want to believe instead.
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.
"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden."
-Matthew 5:12-14 (NIV)
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