Today’s young service employees
seem to think if they talk fast and move you along quickly it somehow equates
to efficiency. I recently purchased two T-shirts and the clerk gave me the spiel
about the money I could save by getting a store credit card and then she quickly
shifted to asking me if I wanted to donate to the stores designated charity…no and no. I pulled cash from my wallet
and she gave me yet another option that the store would pay the $5.00 donation
to the charity for me and I could still save some on my purchase. With my head
spinning she proceeded to “help” me with my cash by telling me which bills
would make the transaction (in her mind) easier to deal with. The clerk and I could both benefit from James,
“My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow
to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not
bring about the righteous life that God desires” (James
1:19-20 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Your experience with the cashier demonstrates a chunk of psychology in James 1:19-20. I like to say we are sandwiches on the beach not because it’s cute or different, but because it is expressive of how the complete human soul nestles into the total of reality. Our minds must handle three different, interrelated worlds. Most obvious but less known is the physical world. Least obvious and least known is the world where the spirits are -God, His angels, Satan, the demons, etc. Recognition, knowledge, and understanding of that world must come through the most obvious, best known world, the mental world. The physical world we think we know so well is really an estimated perception within our own mental world. We accurately know little about the physical world as it is. Paul tells us this at I Corinthians 13:12.
-----Mentality is like water. It has a driving pressure within it. Every crack, nook, and cranny contacted by it becomes another ally down which it squirts. And though it is channeled about, sometimes seemingly willy-nilly through all life’s fractures, what flows through them is yet made more by the mind than it is made of the mind’s physical surroundings. It often seems the only course corrections and reshaping the mind allows its surroundings to exert upon it is simply what it takes to keep the body physically safe. The mind is just too busy relating what it sees to what it knows.
-----Although that relationship is important, the more important relationships for the mind are what it sees to what it sees. The physical world is full of information. In fact, it can be thought of as a giant lump of clay receiving impressed marks and shapes of every thing everything does. I have a friend who is a retired private investigator. An insurance company once hired him because the speed at which a vehicle involved in an accident was important to their liability. He looked at the face of the speed-o-meter dial under a black light where he found the mark made by the speed-o-meter needle at the height of impact. Another case involved a drunk driver claiming he never hit the pedestrian, the dent in his hood was there before. The PI located a very small, but very clear impression of the pedestrians pant’s zipper in the dent on the hood of the drunk’s car. My favorite is the February 25, 1361BC total lunar eclipse. Babylonian astronomer-priests marked a clay tablet when it was observed. By markings NASA makes of all the eclipses, we know that date. By marks Babylonian historians made, we can then date Hammurabi, by which we can date Zimrilim, whom he defeated, by which we can date Yantin, who gave Zimrilim a golden cup, by which we can date Neferhotep I, who was Yantin’s overlord, by which we know the accepted Egyptian chronology is a couple centuries too early, by which adjustment an overwhelming plethora of archeological evidence comes into perfect alignment with the sojourn, Exodus, and conquest stories, thus validating vast swaths of scripture.
-----Although the mental world is the best known, it is also the least true. Demanding correction of its perceptions according to hi-fidelity impressions upon the material world is the “listen” part of James 1:19-20. And there has been no higher fidelity impression made upon the physical world than the life of the Son of God written into the Word of God.
-----Now, homework. Interrelate the old Greek word, “tetradiplon”, the Shroud of Turin, and the Image of Odessa. It’s breathtaking.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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