How Much Is It Worth?

A person of my acquaintance had recently been asked to guard an item of value. The guardian, whom I know to be trustworthy, jokingly asked how much the item was worth, pretending to be tempted by the idea of stealing the item and selling it.

The appraisal of the item could have been based on many factors. The owner of the item told the guardian how much the item had cost him to obtain - a significant amount. However, it was generally known that the item would not fetch nearly as much money for anyone who might steal it.

Thinking about the cost and value of things, I later supposed that an item might be worth more to one person than to another. An apple has much greater value to a man who is starving than to a man who had just eaten his fill. Similarly, the item had much greater value to its owner than it would have had to the guardian. I imagine that the guardian could possibly have found someone who would value the item very highly, but I think that the one person who would place the greatest value on that item was the one who already owned it.

But the most important criteria of appraisal for this particular item is how much it would have cost the guardian to obtain it. There would have been no financial cost for the theft (unless, of course, he was caught and forced to pay reparations), but the more taxing cost of the theft would have been as immeasurable as it would have been intangible. If the guardian had chosen to steal the item, which I know he did not nor ever would have, he would have lost his honor and his personal righteousness. His sense of self-esteem would also have been lost, as would his .... . Terrible reparations would have to be paid, both to the item's owner and to the Lord. In short, stealing the item would have cost the guardian far more than the item could possibly have been worth.

At this point, it seems unthinkable that anyone would pay such a price for any reason, but we may pay that price far more frequently than we care to think about, and for far less than the value of the item. We pay such a price as that whenever we break any of God's commandments. Whenever we transgress or sin, we incur a terrible debt to our Savior, and according to President Boyd K. Packer's parable of the debtor and the mediator, we will eventually have to pay off that debt. Every sin we commit comes at the price increasing the debt we already owe to Jesus.

Is it worth it? Is yielding to temptation really so satisfying that it's worth increasing our spiritual debt? Was the item really so valuable that the guardian would sell his soul to get it? Of course not. The answer to the question "How much is it worth?" is "Not enough." It could never be worth enough. Sin is never worth its price. Never.