Don’t ask me why I was thinking about this. The truth is I don’t really know myself. Anyway, I was thinking about what kind of credit cards God would give us if he were running a credit agency. The first thing that came into my mind was the old Capital One commercials. The one where the guy goes out and buys all the stuff and then the pirates start swarming out of everywhere and jumping out of store windows ready to pillage the poor guy with ridiculously high interest rates. Frankly I find the commercials really funny. Their whole point is that the capital one does not endorse piracy, even in the area of interest rated. When the pirates discover that the shopper has a Capital One card, they go away sad and dejected, until they find someone with “the other credit card” whence they gloriously pillage anew. What does this have to do with the spiritual life? Really, very little. Anyway, back to the point. God and a credit card. The whole purpose of a credit card is to help us do something financially that we are currently unable to do on our own. It helps us to overcome the little difficulties in life that we may run into on a daily basis. At the end of the month we pay back part or all of the money that we borrowed. The great thing about God is that everything he does for us is a gift. There is no paying him back at the end of the month. Indeed, his gifts are so lavish that it would be completely impossible to pay him back. We can, however, say thank you. If God handed out credit cards, or rather gift cards since we are not able to repay him, I think they would run on humility. This goes back to the Capitol One card analogy with the pirates and interest rates. Pride has often been seen as the root of all other sins. Like interest and the pirates. Therefore, we need the opposite of pride in our lives if we are going to avoid sin. Humility. This is a humility that can only come from God. It is a true gift of grace that we need more of in our world. We live in a culture where we are told to go ahead and do whatever we want and that no one has any right to tell us otherwise. It is difficult for us to place ourselves at the service of others, especially when we may not even like them. It is hard to let someone trample on our dignity and sometimes even rob us of what we think are our rights. It may be hard, but we must remember that Jesus did nothing less for us.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
What's in your Wallet? The Capital One card of teh spiritual life. (11-25-2007)
Don’t ask me why I was thinking about this. The truth is I don’t really know myself. Anyway, I was thinking about what kind of credit cards God would give us if he were running a credit agency. The first thing that came into my mind was the old Capital One commercials. The one where the guy goes out and buys all the stuff and then the pirates start swarming out of everywhere and jumping out of store windows ready to pillage the poor guy with ridiculously high interest rates. Frankly I find the commercials really funny. Their whole point is that the capital one does not endorse piracy, even in the area of interest rated. When the pirates discover that the shopper has a Capital One card, they go away sad and dejected, until they find someone with “the other credit card” whence they gloriously pillage anew. What does this have to do with the spiritual life? Really, very little. Anyway, back to the point. God and a credit card. The whole purpose of a credit card is to help us do something financially that we are currently unable to do on our own. It helps us to overcome the little difficulties in life that we may run into on a daily basis. At the end of the month we pay back part or all of the money that we borrowed. The great thing about God is that everything he does for us is a gift. There is no paying him back at the end of the month. Indeed, his gifts are so lavish that it would be completely impossible to pay him back. We can, however, say thank you. If God handed out credit cards, or rather gift cards since we are not able to repay him, I think they would run on humility. This goes back to the Capitol One card analogy with the pirates and interest rates. Pride has often been seen as the root of all other sins. Like interest and the pirates. Therefore, we need the opposite of pride in our lives if we are going to avoid sin. Humility. This is a humility that can only come from God. It is a true gift of grace that we need more of in our world. We live in a culture where we are told to go ahead and do whatever we want and that no one has any right to tell us otherwise. It is difficult for us to place ourselves at the service of others, especially when we may not even like them. It is hard to let someone trample on our dignity and sometimes even rob us of what we think are our rights. It may be hard, but we must remember that Jesus did nothing less for us.
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