It’s how they get you; it always has been. The fine print, the details, those thirty-seven pages of small print that explains why money isn’t free, and how you’re expected to pay more than what you received to finance that super cool jet ski even though you live in the Mojave, in a forty-year-old airstream camper, with your three-legged dog Skip.
Their job is to get you to sign on the dotted line, then
profit from your inability to curb your need for instant gratification. Why do
you think banks have such nice buildings? It’s not magnanimity or selflessness
that made them billions and billions of dollars; it’s people’s gullibility and
their reticence in reading the fine print.
It’s the old adage of people buying things they don’t need
with money they don’t have, but that’s why they invented credit and credit
cards. Sometimes you know offhand that an individual is prone to making bad
life choices when they’re driving a six-figure car but have only one tooth.
Priorities, priorities.
People have even gone to court over the details of contracts,
especially when it comes to timeshares. Apparently, it’s one of those things
you pass down to your kids and grandkids at infinitum, with them having to pay
some sort of fee every month even though they just found a decapitated human
head floating in the pool of the timeshare you belong to. A contract’s a
contract, and you should have read the fine print; now pay up. Was all that
really worth the free portable television back in the 90s?
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been burned so many times by
people eager to help me out that I’m always looking for the hidden catch, the
trap door, the club behind the back that they’ll start swinging as soon as I
let my guard down. Yes, it’s a harrowing way to live, but as George Bush tried
saying once, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
When it comes to what God says, I’m not looking for the fine
print because there isn’t any. That in itself is refreshing. It’s like a breath
of fresh air after you’ve spent a day in a mine choking on dust and stale
sweat. God is direct, clear, and forthright; when He speaks a thing, He means
the thing He speaks. We don’t have to wonder or guess at what He said; we must
simply obey and see the fulfillment of His promises.
We cannot project the same weariness toward God as we do
toward people trying to sell us something. We cannot question intent or motive
when He speaks, nor should we worry about some as yet unseen ulterior motive. God
doesn’t play games the way men do, and He’s never asked you to pick up your
phone, dial that number, and make the biggest love offering you can. It’s got
to be sacrificial if you want it to work, after all.
Whenever I encounter people who insist that God failed them,
my first question is whether they did what God told them to do. Were they
obedient in both the great things and the small, or did they talk themselves
into believing that He would be okay with half-measures? Some drawn-out
explanation always precedes their answer as to why they couldn’t be in full
compliance with the will of God or why their obedience was only superficial but
trying to justify it doesn’t take away from the fact that there was no
obedience.
If your doctor prescribes you heart medication, but you don’t
take it and end up in the emergency room, it’s not your doctor’s fault. He did
his part; he told you what you needed to do in order to keep from clawing at
your chest and feeling as though an elephant was sitting on you. You chose not
to follow through. You chose not to take your medication and must now suffer
the consequences of your actions.
I have gout. My grandfather had it too. This was before the
time of full panel bloodwork and other such things, and so his doctor said it
was arthritis and did not discourage him from eating the things that could
trigger a gout flare-up. It was a Romanian doctor, at least, he said he was a
doctor. It was California in the late eighties, we were poor, and you could get
a consult for twenty bucks cash.
Although he never prescribed my grandfather any meds, he said
he could, but always reminded him that they were cheaper in Mexico. It’s odd
the things you look back on and find terribly suspicious with the benefit of
hindsight.
I got my first physical a couple of years back because my
little brother kept insisting on it. Other than discovering I was one of those
rare specimens whose overall health is counter to his Rubenesque physical
appearance, I was informed there was a medication that would counter the uric
acid buildup in my joints that were the cause of the gout attacks.
I then had a choice to make. Take the meds, or don’t. Because
I’m not a fan of pain, I took the meds for a few days, but they made me feel
funny and a bit off. Because I didn’t like the way they made me feel, I made
the choice to stop taking them and attempt to control the gout through diet
alone. It’s worked thus far, I haven’t had a flare-up in ages, but if I do, I
can’t go to my doctor waving my finger in his face accusing him of being a quack.
The choice was mine, as were the consequences thereof.
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