Part of my job is to pay out people’s mortgages when they sell their homes. I request a payout statement in advance, but some banks or some mortgage types require confirmation of the payout amount on the day you plan on paying. Today I called a bank to do just that. (This bank has, confusingly, individual departments for several different loan types). But I got to where I needed to get (through the phone menu) and had the following conversation:
Bank: [monotone, grumpy-sounding guy]Thank you for calling This Bank*. My name is Roger Q. Bankguy, how can I help you?
Marc: Hi, I’d like to confirm a mortgage payout. I’ll give you the mortgage number—I mean, loan reference number?
B: Hold on. Is this a mortgage? Or a Loan With A Name Unique To This Bank?
Marc: I pushed the “loan” button. It’s a loan.
B: You said “mortgage”.
Marc: I meant “loan”.
B: I can only go by what you say.
[I said loan.]
Marc: You want the loan number?
B: OK.
Marc: 12345-6789
B: Just a minute
[I'm put on hold]
B: Which province are you calling from?
Marc: Saskatchewan.
B: Can I have that number again?
Marc: 12345-6789. Do you want the transit number?
B: No, that’s fine.
Marc: It’s for Mrs. Jane Q. Pu—
B: Yep.
Marc: I’m looking for an updated payout amount.
B: I can’t give you the actual amount owing.
Marc: It says on your payout statement that I should call you to confirm the payout amount.
B: I can only confirm a number.
Marc: What do you mean?
B: I can only say “Yes” or “No” to a number you give me.
Marc: OK. . . The amount for September 1st, according to your payout statement, was $76,543.21.
B: No, I don’t have that here. That’s not the right amount.
Marc: OK.
B: You have to add in the per diem.
Marc: OK. Hold on [quick interest calculations] How about $76,553.21?
B: No, I don’t have that amount here.
Marc: You can’t just give me the payout amount for tomorrow? Your payout statement says in big, bold letters that I should call the bank to confirm the payout amount.
B: I can only confirm a number you give me.
Marc: Can I give you another number, then?
B: Well. . . I can only stay on the line for so long. You can’t just throw out random numbers.
Marc: It’s not random numbers, I’m just adding another day’s interest.
B: OK, go ahead.
Marc: How about $76,563.21?
B: No, I don’t have that amount here.
Marc: *Exasperated sigh* OK, thank you.
*Click* (firmly)
* * *
When Dixie read this conversation she said, “It did say ‘confirm’”, implying that saying so doesn’t mean they’ll give me an amount. But how does that even make sense? If they are just confirming an amount I give them, the odds are against me getting it right. Unless I get the number exactly right, they will say “No, that isn’t right.” So what’s the point of calling at all?
Last summer I spent probably 15-20 minutes on the phone with this same bank trying to get through to someone in a particular department: menus without the options I’m looking for, which leads to someone in the wrong department, who puts me through to the right department, who can’t find the file, who puts me through to another department, and so on.
And you know what they all say? “We’ve made some changes to our system to improve your banking experience.” FALSE.
There’s another bank running the following advertising slogan: “You’re richer than you think.” Also false, unless I’m crazy and credit debt is actually wealth. It drives me nuts every time I see it. Could there be a more misleading and financially destructive slogan?
*grumble grumble*
Anyway. . .
__________________________________ *Names and numbers have been changed to protect the identity of those who were involved. Except my name. My name is staying the same. . . and. . . I am. . . completely exposed.
We have quite a bit to learn from our kids, I think. Jesus was on to something when he said, “Let the children come to me . . . for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14, ESV)
I’m thinking now of last month’s one night camping trip with the kids. My patience with the children has been wearing very thin lately, but I had imagined a nice relaxed time with them—no hurry to do anything in particular, no place to be—but for various reasons it didn’t turn out that way.
Looks idyllic, doesn’t it?
Thursday morning—the morning I met The Sex Patrol Kid—I took the kids out fishing. As great as the picture looks—and as much as I had imagined it just as idyllically—much of my time was spent getting frustrated at Luke (it’s easy to forget that he’s only 3) and yelling. Afterward, I felt quite defeated, like a failure. I’ve apologized to the kids a lot lately—more out of fear that I’ve scarred them somehow than anything else (well, also because I was sorry). Luke got a big hug after fishing.
After we went fishing we phoned home to Dixie. When Luke got on the phone he talked excitedly to Dixie about what we had done so far.
“And we went fishing with Dad!” he shouted into the phone.
The boy was excited. Apparently my angry outbursts were already forgotten by him. Kids are resilient and forgiving. They are fine examples of showing unconditional love. I wish we adults could be the same.
Why does the kingdom of God belong to the children? Because in their best moments they are able to live the kingdom un-self-consciously—in some respects, unwittingly—and without reservation. Adults are not, for the most part, able to do that. Not naturally, anyway.
Earth’s crammed with Heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes—
The rest sit ’round it and pluck blackberries.
Bleh. Another gloomy Saturday. The morning started off well, but after an early afternoon nap, things degenerated rather quickly
By supper time I decided that we needed to get out of the house, that I did not want to have supper at home with all of us the way we were. So we went to the A&W drive-thru and picked up some burgers and fries. As usual, they did not put any ketchup packets in our bag. When did they stop doing this automatically? I backed-up to the drive-thru window and asked for some ketchup.
“You guys should probably start putting these in the bags automatically,” I said to the youngster in the drive-thru window. He muttered something unintelligible. I immediately regretted my choice of phrasing. I turned to Dixie.
“Did I just sound like a crotchety old man?”
She nodded in the affirmative.
“How else could I have said it? It’s true, right? They should automatically put a couple of ketchup packets in with an order of fries.”
I tried to justify my comment, but continued to regret making it. I don’t like the idea of being perceived to be a curmudgeon, ’cause I’m a pretty nice guy. Right? RIGHT?
* * *
In the A&W drive-thru I was grumbling to Dixie about being gloomy and she made some comment about me being on the computer all day. This made me grumpier, because she was speaking hyperbolically, as she often tends to do, and because I knew she was right to a degree.
Is this a sign of addiction: constantly returning to something even though it makes you feel like crap? Maybe that’s just boredom. Anyway, I do too much of that. Dixie’s mom turns off her computer every time she is finished using it. I used to think this was somewhat strange: why not leave it on so you don’t have to wait for it to boot up next time you want to check something? I no longer find it strange, but wise. If I had to boot up every time I wanted to check email or blogs or whatever, I wouldn’t do that so often. When I do, I tend to get sucked into aimless browsing, which makes me feel like crap.
It came to mind today that it would be interesting to do a study (or read a book) on feasting in the Bible and how it relates to the unquestionable concern for the poor and needy in scripture. I had a conversation today about expensive meals out and inevitably the subject of how many starving children in Africa could have been fed with the money spent on lunch for a couple of people ’round these parts. I suggested that enjoying good food is not wrong in itself—there is a vast difference between fast food and fine dining.
That passage in Deuteronomy, always on standby for a discussion on alcohol, came to mind—Deuteronomy 14:22-27 (TNIV):
22 Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year. 23 Eat the tithe of your grain, new wine and olive oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name, so that you may learn to revere the LORD your God always.24 But if that place is too distant and you have been blessed by the LORD your God and cannot carry your tithe (because the place where the LORD will choose to put his Name is so far away), 25 then exchange your tithe for silver, and take the silver with you and go to the place the LORD your God will choose. 26 Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the LORD your God and rejoice. 27 And do not neglect the Levites living in your towns, for they have no allotment or inheritance of their own.
Basically: if you can’t make to the appointed place for leaving your tithe, sell your tithe and use the proceeds to get party supplies and then have a feast. This is such a foreign concept to us—feasting and partying as an act of worship; I’m sure most Christians feel some degree of guilt when throwing a party—North American Christians, anyway.
But even the Old Testament and the laws found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy specifically stress the need for the Israelites to care for the poor—farmers not picking up dropped or missed grain for the poor to pick up and the year of Jubilee are two examples among many.
So where do the poor fit in with the Biblical feast? In this passage the tither isn’t commanded to give the profits from the sold grains to the poor. The Levite in this passage is the representative of the poor, I suppose, but it simply says that in their feasting and rejoicing before the Lord, don’t forget about the poor guy in the village with nothing of his own.
The party—in which a tenth of the person’s income is spent on food and drink in one big splash—will go on in spite of the poor man next door. Take care of the poor man, it says, but party and rejoice. Perhaps I’m missing some historical context, but that’s one of the things I’m getting from this passage. Some of us have a hard time justifying such a thing, but there it is in writing. Maybe the poor man was invited to the party, but we can’t exactly invite the population of Africa to a party. How does this work in this global age?
I’ve been trying to be a better feaster the last couple of years when we have gatherings with friends. I’m not talking about gluttony, but about enjoying the food—enjoying the food, savouring the variety of flavours. This is a form of worship—praise to God—I think. I’m not suggesting rub it in or force it on people (see Romans 14), but it’s legit, I’d say.
Feel like posting something, but don’t have much time right now. So I’m going to steal a quote that Lisa posted:
“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, the wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ” John Ruskin
Agreed. Although, given what has happened around here in the last couple of days, there are certainly bad weather systems.
This is what N.T. Wright has to say about final judgment in Surprised by Hope (the book to which the author quoted in the last post was responding):
. . . I believe [the following possibility] does justice to both the key texts and to the realities of human life of which, after a century of horror mostly dreamed up by human beings, we are now all too well aware. When human beings give their hearfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what’s more, you reflect what you worship not only back to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners, or customers, rather than as human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sexual objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch. My suggestion is that it is possible for human beings so to continue down this road, so to refuse all whisperings of good news, all glimmers of the true light, all promptings to turn and go the other way, allsignposts to the love of God, that after death they become at last, by their own effective choice, beings that once were human but now are not, creatures that have ceased to bear the divine image at all. With the death of that body in which they inhabited God’s good world, in which the flickering flame of goodness had not been completely snuffed out, they pass simultaneously not only beyond hope but also beyond pity. There is no concentration camp in the beautiful countryside, no torture chamber in the palace of delight. Those creatures that still exist in an ex-human state, no longer reflecting their maker in any meaningful sense, con no longer excite in themselves or others the natural sympathy some feel even for the hardened criminal. (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, pp. 182-3)
Another interesting perspective. I suspect, however, that this is more speculative even than some would consider Universalism to be.
(It also, incidentally, makes me think of something from a fantasy novel. First I thought of Gollum, but that wasn’t right. Then I settled on Ringwraiths.
Oh, and by the way, whenever I say “fantasy novel”, I mean “a book by J. R. R. Tolkien”.)
