Grandpa, tell me ’bout the good old days
Sometimes it feels like this world’s gone crazy
Grandpa, take me back to yesterday
When the line between right and wrong
Didn’t seem so hazy-The Judds
“Missing Grandma and Peace of Mind”
“The Vault for Broken Promises”
“The Glory That Once Was America”
“Grandma Told Him, ‘Store Up Treasures in Heaven'”
When I resigned my third church as senior pastor, I ventured into the insurance world and first sold insurance and variable products before working a career as an insurance adjuster between ministries. In the 1990’s I was hired by a nationally known life insurance/securities company and teamed with an experienced agent. I was shocked to see every hallway in the office was crammed full of boxes of papers and was ordered place any paper I used for notes or writing into the discovery box. I asked my trainer, “What’s up with the boxes?”
He explained, “There was a lawsuit due to insurance sales people who churned customers out of solid existing policies into variable annuities by promising customers that they could invest in their variable annuities and, after a period of time, they would not have to pay any premiums using the “vanishing premium fraud that dividends will pay their premiums.” When dividends did not pay the premiums, the policies were canceled and the customers lost their money. So, my trainer and I drove to the homes of former defrauded customers and explained their variable annuities were “back in force,” which gave us an opportunity to try to sell them additional product. Suffice it to say, these customers were none too eager to invest again in what we were selling.
Both insurance and church work are based on “utmost good faith,” considering that one bases its faith on a contract and the other on the Bible. Utmost good faith means, “You are only as good as your word.” The old farmer’s “handshake deal” represents the gold standard that you can stand on the promise. This is different from basing a contract on what you can sneak by. While lying as a business practice has spread like measles to the highest offices of our land, may we return to that utmost good faith dealing that will not require us one day to right the wrongs that festered due to our own deceptions.
Pastor Jim
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy,[c] your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are unhealthy,[d] your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
-Matthew 6:19-21 from the Sermon on the Mount