I Am A Patsy

Proverbs 16:8, 18-19 Better a little with righteousness than a huge income with injustice...Pride goes before destruction, and arrogance before failure. Better to be humble among the poor than share the spoil with the proud. CJB
How many of you remember a day when, instead of signing pages of legalize , you shook hands over a deal, came to a verbal agreement and then stuck with what you verbally agreed upon? Probably not many of you do,especially if your a bit younger then I am.The only way that the agreement would ever be broken was if  there was some unforeseen catastrophe, but even then people went out of their way to try to keep the agreement. The only time a lawyer was involved with anything was in cases of some serious crime. Your word and your name were at stake so you didn't just agree to something out of hand.  Even when I was still a kid you could have a running tab at the store and pay it off as you went. No one on either side of the agreement expected to be ripped off in any way. You said that you would do it and that was enough. Your word was your bond and it meant something. Think about it, you did most of your business locally and you knew the people that you were doing business with. If you were the local grocer and the local mechanic needed a couple of days before he could pay his bill you helped him out, why? Because he would do the same for you if it was needed. If you were the local doctor and the farmer was a day or two late you could either go a get some produce from him to settle the bill or at the very least give him sometime to pay because he was your source of food. Honesty and integrity worked well because you did everything local and you knew each other.
How things have changed since I was a kid,  we seem to live in an essentially Mafia movie run world, full of greed and pride. How many times have you watched a Mafia type movie and the patsy is about to get shot and the proverbial bad guy looks at him and says, "nothing personal it's business" and then kills the guy? "Nothing personal" is a wonderful sentiment but it  does nothing for the guy who is now lying in a pool of his own blood with his brains splattered across the floor. This is what has changed today in the world. It has become all"business" with nothing personal about it.
Here are a couple of my own proverbial "mafia" moments. I put down a sizable chunk of change on a car, money that I really couldn't spare but I needed a car, and I admit that I did buy it as is.  However I was not expecting that one month later the engine was going to blow. The initial commentary was that they would make this right. For almost 2 months we did battle with them, the car dealership, and the financial institution, that financed the little bit we had to finance,over what was to be done. In the end we lost all of our money invested into this car and the car as well. I bought the car "as is" so it became nothing but business and I was the dead patsy.
If this was the only incident I might think it was a fluke but it seems to be just the tip of the iceberg.
A delivery driver was rude to me and my wife, for the second time, because he had to make another delivery to our house, his words " would have been simpler if you had just gone to Walmart." Sorry to have inconvienced him by having him do his job. Worse yet was the reason he was there, was because the first time he had come, the product we had ordered was smashed and wrapped in bubble wrap in the hopes that we wouldn't see it.
My wife and I recently went  into a large store and ordered a refrigerator, this being a place that I had done business with before, and a place that I had used their credit card. We went to pay for it with the card only to find out that they had canceled the card with no warning and then refused to issue me a new one because I didn't use it enough. To say that I was upset would be a mild statement. It wasn't the fact that I had to spend extra money from my pocket, though that was frustrating, it was the idea that they couldn't even send me a letter telling me that it had been canceled, no, I had to go through being publicly humiliated before I could know. Again I was the patsy.
One last example, though there are many that I could write. My wife went to order a product, after researching it on line. The man that she spoke to tried to sell her the same product but at a substantially higher price. He assumed that she hadn't looked on line first, so he was going to take her for as much as he could get. This time it failed, but how many other times has he successfully hung people out to dry with out them ever knowing? This seems to be some sort of common trend amongst "customer service" types. I have heard it said that their job isn't to help you, rather it's their job to sell you products that you don't really want or need. They get this training from the Corporate office's, so what does this say about the business world? What does this say about our nation as a whole?
Sadly we are not the only people this is happening to. It seems like something has infected the entire business world and government for that matter.
My wife and I were talking about it and we were trying to figure out why this is happening so much everywhere and it kind of hit just who these corporations are being run by. They are being run by the kids of the 60's who were told that they couldn't have prayer in school and that Bibles were a violation of church and state. These kids were taught under a completely different view point then their predecessors and now they are the CEO's with little morals to guide them. Of course this isn't true of all of them but it certainly seems to be a serious trend. I even remember a Christian business man, once telling me that even though you follow G-D you have to operate your business differently in order to survive. I disagree with that mentality. If you run your business ethically and you are known for honesty and integrity the word spreads and people will come to you to do business.
I realize that some of you who are reading this will disagree with me in my assessment of what has happened, but the evidence seems pretty clear to me. If you take out morals from the business world and toss out honesty and integrity as a guide, what then takes over? Greed,arrogance, pride, a disdain for your fellow man, especially for those in need, a spirit that says I am going to get mine and I will run over whomever I must to get it. If this isn't the problem today then please tell me what it is, because something evil has taken a hold and it is spreading everywhere.
Proverbs 16:8, 18-19 Better a little with righteousness than a huge income with injustice...Pride goes before destruction, and arrogance before failure. Better to be humble among the poor than share the spoil with the proud. CJB

Experts and Lunar Sabbaths

Have you ever wondered what it takes to become the proverbial "expert" on a particular subject? I can't begin to count how many times I have watched a news segment and they have come out with someone who is an "expert" on whatever the subject matter is; OK today we will be talking of the mating habits of the flying fruit fish and how they effect the economy of motor sports, with author and expert John Smith who's latest book " Mating Habits Of the Flying Fruit Fish and How They Effect Motor Sports" has reached number 50 in the NY Times weird books and experts categories...

To be an expert on anything today seems to be a trivial thing to accomplish, produce a book or a college paper with crayon colored pictures and you now have become the resident expert.

Having been a pastor and ordained in two different denominations, I can tell you us ordained types like to be "experts" on biblical subjects. I have a friend who has studied Greek intensely.You want to know what a Greek word means in the NT just ask him he can go into great detail on Greek and the history behind it,now while I accept that  he is good at it, and his crayon pictures are remarkable, does it make him an "expert"? As for me my thing is Hebrew words and their meanings as well as the biblical history and beliefs of the Hebrew/ Jewish people, though my coloring leaves something to be desired,I love this kind of stuff and have been studying it for years  but does that make me an "expert"?

Well for at least a few minutes over the weekend it did, and this is sort of what this post is about. A friend , who pastors a church in Florida, contacted me about a group trying to influence some of his members into following what they call the " Lunar Sabbath." The theory is that the Sabbath is to be observed according to the lunar cycle rather then the weekly cycle and that they have "proof" of this being done by the ancient Israelites. Their "experts" wax long and eloquent of how everyone, Sunday keepers and Saturday keepers are all wrong and are actually worshipping Satan rather then G-D by keeping the weekly Sabbath. To say that there are so many holes and total absurdities in this theory would be a massive understatement. You would literally have to ignore and rewrite large parts of the Bible in order for this to be even remotely true. But if you ignore the actual facts and fine tune your tinfoil hat to pick up a signal from Venus  then you would have to go and correct the Jewish people who have been following G-D and His Torah for the past 4,000 years, including the Sabbath, and pray that they don't stone you for such absurdities.

So who would you believe in this case?  Someone who claims to have some sort of new light that the rest of humanity has missed for the last 5700 years or would you choose the Jewish people who just might know a thing or two about the Sabbath or even  me as a Gentile "expert" who , at least in this case , sticks to fact rather then fiction?  I have a better idea, how about study about it for yourselves! Why take my word for it or anyone else for that matter? I am human so I could be wrong.

One of the most frustrating things about being a pastor or a Rabbi of any kind, at least for me, has been having had people follow what I say, without ever actually reading it or researching for themselves. As long as I could put some text with it many people would just nod their heads in the appropriate places. I could be explaining to them how Santa Claus is the real reason for the war of Gog-Magog or Armageddon is caused by the tooth fairy and as long as I toss in a few bible quotes, that might be vaguely relevant,  many people will just nod their heads and accept what you say because that is much easier then actually thinking for yourself.

In light of all this, I have decided that I am not going to try and prove myself or my beliefs to anyone. This whole idea of the "Lunar Sabbath" has shown me that if you are really interested in learning what I believe, or any one else for that matter, then you will do the research for your selves. I will be happy to lay out the parameters that I used, but if you really want to know then you will take the time to find out.

One last thing to consider, in light of this Lunar Sabbath idea, people like Jim Jones and David Koresh had followers that didn't know what was in the scriptures, if you won't take the time to find out for yourself then just remember this; don't drink the koolaid.
Shalom