Pastors' Blog

Listen to the “Motley Fool.” While most of us don’t suffer fools lightly, the Motley Fool is one voice we’d do well to pay heed. Last week I began a two-part mini-series that I’ll conclude today, “The Awkward Ambitions of a Middle Class” (both teachings are at our website: www.pmchurch.tv). Thanks to James D. Scurlock’s new book, Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit, and the Era of Predatory Lenders, you and I have found the courage to take on the shameful secret nobody wants to talk about—personal indebtedness.

In today’s part-two we’re going to tackle a divine prescription for our American consumerism’s discontent. And I’m certain you and I will find the biblical counsel not only pertinent, but practical. But in advance of filling out the study guide for today’s teaching, I’d like to share with you the Motley Fool’s six-point strategy for “eliminating credit card debt.” You may read a more detailed presentation of these six steps at the Motley Fool website: http://www.fool.com/seminars/sp/index.htm?sid=0001&lid=200&pid=0000.

If you’re shackled with credit card debts, prayerfully consider these six recommended steps:

#1—stop using your cards. Take them out of your wallet or purse. Cut them up if necessary. But credit counselors the world over agree. Quit using them. In today’s part-two I’ll share with you Dave Ramsey’s surprising critique of using them even when you’re paying them off every month.)

#2—stop the flood of credit card offers. The Motley Fool notes that you can force credit bureaus to stop selling your name by calling 1-888-OPTOUT to request the forms.

#3—always pay more than the minimum. Minimum payments are not a courtesy of the credit card companies; they’re strategically designed to keep you in debt to them for as long as possible.

#4—plan your attack. In today’s part-two be listening for Dave Ramsey’s prioritization strategy for eliminating your debts.

#5—reduce the interest rate. Credit card companies are willing to reduce their rates to keep you as a customer. Call their toll free number and ask for a rate reduction. Rates from 16% to 20% can be reduced to 11-12%. (But pay off your balances to avoid even those high rates.)

#6—consolidate your debts. Go to the Motley Fool site and read the small print of this step #6 carefully.

While Jesus wasn’t describing credit card debt, his promise can lift the hopes of every indebted home: “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). This morning as we examine the path to freedom from debt, let every heart take hope and courage in the Christ who offers what we seek most. You can live free!

Sure you want to become a mother?  Here are some numbers you may want to crunch before you decide!  Statistics released this week in the latest Newsweek magazine reveal that the first two years of a new baby’s life will cost $32,000.  And if you’re wanting more than one child, you can plan on an added $24,000 for each additional child.  Just for their first two years of moving into your heart and home! And what will it cost to raise that little cherub to the age of 18?  Newsweek reports that over those eighteen years a middle-class family will spend an average of $190,980, not including college or lost wages from a parent who remains at home.  Per child.  Add the costs of college and the lost wages of that parent who stayed at home, and the estimated cost from infancy to age eighteen skyrockets to $1,589,793! Still sure you want to be a mom? Average stay-at-home mothers (what’s an average mom?) work 92 hours a week in their mothering (is anybody surprised?).  If you took her “homework” and parceled it out into the various jobs/tasks that she performs each week, she should be earning (based on the median national salary for the categories of labor she provides) a whopping $138,095 a year!  As Newsweek quips, “Sure, the validation is purely symbolic, but it may come as some solace at a time when stay-at-home moms are being taken to task in the new book ‘The Feminine Mistake’ for giving up the financial independence their [women’s rights] mothers fought so hard to win” (5-14-07 Newsweek). Are you a mom or a mother-wanna-be?  There’s an old, dusty Book that sits on American shelves across the land this Mother’s Day.  And in that Book the Author makes certain the genuine value of a godly mother is clearly portrayed.  “She watches over the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.  Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all.’”  And then the wisest man who ever lived adds this summation:  “Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.” (Proverbs 31:27-30) And so to all our mothers and moms, I know I express the sentiments of a grateful nation and church when on this Mother’s Day we rise up and indeed call you “Blessed.”   For you are truly the gift of God to us all.

Six contestants left for America’s new idol.  How’s that for a headline this week?  As the Today Show on NBC ran a report of the elimination countdown to American’s new “number one” amateur performer, the screen caption throughout the report blazed, “Idol Worship.”  How clever, but how true!  Except for you and me, of course.

I’ve been blessed teaching nineteen young seminarian preachers this semester.  One of the students, Shawn Brace, was assigned the second commandment, God’s prohibition against idol worship (see Exodus 20:4-6).   He did some research on previous contestants on Fox’s American Idol telecast (which, for those who don’t know, is an old-fashioned amateur hour that’s dictated by the millions of viewer votes that are electronically cast each week, slowly eliminating the contestants).  Shawn discovered that one year in the top tier of contenders, each was asked to name his personal “idol” (a hero, a role model, someone idolized).  One contestant was candidly honest in his written reply:  “Myself.”  His number one hero . . . himself.

Surprised?  Probably not.  After all we live in a society bent back onto itself in self-admiration, don’t we?  Driven by Madison Avenue and an entertainment and sports world where stars unabashedly self-promote, it seems only natural that we do the same, doesn’t it? Which, of course, has been the modus operandi on this planet from the beginning—look out for Numero Uno—as Adam and Eve and Cain and all our forefathers and foremothers have unsubtly taught us.  It was the original sin, after all, that brought down Lucifer and his loyal rebels.  Self-worship—making an idol out of “myself.”

That’s why the story of Jesus is so radical and hope-filled.  Because the God of the universe become Man entered our mortal stream of existence to dramatically, humbly show us the other way.  The way of the God who ever defers to others, who “made himself of no reputation and humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death” (Philippians 2:5-8).  Who died to the very self that is so ragingly strong in you and me.  And who now beckons us, “If you would come after Me, deny yourself, and take up your cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24).

The perfect invitation for the ending of this school year.  Because there’s a world waiting to be conquered—not for “myself” but for our Savior.  Who, of course, isn’t an idol at all, but is the greatest Hero of all.  Which is how I wish that young contestant had answered,  since—as it turns out—he grew up in the church I did.

What can we learn from “shock jock” Don Imus’ meltdown?  In case you were fasting from the news this week (which isn’t such a bad idea, come to think of it), you know the public furor over the racially and sexually derogatory remarks that nationally syndicated radio talk show host Don Imus made about the Rutgers University NCAA women’s basketball finalists, words unworthy of repetition.  Both CBS radio and MSNBC cable television dropped the Imus show for two weeks.  Corporate sponsors pulled their ads and financial backing.  The public backlash has been quick and strong.

And yet, truth be told, the irreverent diatribe of so public an entertainer as Imus can only be explained by the recognition that hundreds of thousands of Americans tune in each day to listen to him.  The millions of dollars of corporate sponsorship poured into his program are a frank admission that the public thrives on living (at least in thought, if not in practice) on the crude edge of courtesy and decency, not to mention bigotry and hate.  (I’m not thinking, of course, of you and me—but rather all those others out there.)

And what shall we and “all those others” learn from this unseemly (but no longer unusual) flap?  Perhaps that it really isn’t a flap at all.  Could it be that it represents the mounting evidence of our society’s drive to insular independence and isolation (the only three people I have time to care about are I, me and myself)?  Could it be that Imus still gets so large a hearing because tearing down public and private figures satisfies the smallness of our own hearts to prop ourselves up on the wreckage of others?  To trash a team of ten young coeds who made it to the pinnacle of their sport, just as they were savoring that accomplishment?

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked—who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)   We’re all in the same boat together.  It’s no wonder that even God himself at times has struggled with his own corporate sponsorship of the human race!  Thank God he hasn’t pulled the plug on our self-worshiping, people-trashing ways and sent us packing.  Not yet anyway.  Because Mercy keeps running after us, doesn’t it?

But what do you say we let Mercy catch up with us?  We can pray for Don Imus, but let us also pray for our own hearts.  And lips.  That the Great Commandment—to love God supremely and our neighbor impartially—will compel our thoughts, our words, our actions.  After all, if nobody is our brother and sister’s keeper, than there’s nobody left to keep us either.  And that would be the saddest meltdown of all.