Paying the price - 2/2

A gas station owner down the road from me, recently got pinged for hiking the price of petrol by a few cents a litre. He claims that he had a sign on the counter (explaining the surcharge) that might have got turned around by accident. Yeah right!

Look, I don’t know whether he did it deliberately or not, and the last people on earth that I would trust to tell me the full story is a TV news article, but it sounds a little too sneaky for me. I think the guy probably just got caught out. Now he’s gotta pay the price - one big momma fine. If he’s a crook, then “Good job!”, I say.

I come across sleaseballs, liars and cheats in business all the time, and way more now than when I first started in business. My father had a drawer in a filing cabinet in his office. He called it “Idiots and Optimists”.
It contained all the silly stuff that you come across in business. Requests for refunds from people who had already used the goods; price enquiries on a grossly uneconomic quantity of something; a request for urgent pigeon-post delivery to Timbuktu to arrive last week; and the real corkers - the guys who bought something with a dud cheque, or who vamoosed off the planet, just when it came time to pay for it.

The thing is that 30 years ago, this little drawer had maybe a dozen files in it, representing the sum total of 20 years of business. I’ve got a filing system with just as many crooks in it and that’s just the last couple of years trading alone!

When I had a retail computer outlet (in the days of 386 and 486 computers) we noticed a general trend for the customers to seek more for less. Not more computer power, but more value, more service, more support for their money. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that in itself, but we could see the anger, selfishness and greed factors rise in our customers every year.

There has been a massive trend in business to push the limits, and squeeze others, regardless of the morality of the deal. It’s a newsworthy deal when somebody actually does fess up to their debts and pay out. I’ve been in that position a few times. Things get out of hand a little and the bills stack up, and the creditors are “on your case”. Fortunately I’ve always been able to claw back, clear the accounts and keep everybody happy.

Not everyone does, though and it’s so easy to walk away from a debt, lie, cheat, steal or just go bankrupt and start again. Look I can sympathise with the pain of business adversity more than many, but there is a big plus to doing things right and a lot of negatives to financial shenanigans.

A few years ago my lawyers had a partner who let the team down in a big way. He helped himself to a bit of money that wasn’t his. A lot of money in fact - um, actually a LOT of noughts. It was a big-time scandal and the good guys on the team did something that not many would have done in the circumstances - they paid the price. Yup, even though they could have kept their personal assets, closed up shop, called in the receiver and paid out one cent in the dollar, the good guys sold up all their houses, called in all that they could personally and paid out every one of the little old ladies that could have lost their life’s savings. Nobody lost one cent, except the good guys. Darn. I hate it when that happens.

The personal price they all paid was humongous. But they did the right thing, and the big plus is that while the majority of the legal profession are still perceived to be just crims in suits, these guys have a very strong reputation for honesty and integrity that money can’t buy (well actually money did buy it!). I’ve even heard that other lawyers actually trust them as a result of their conduct. Hey that’s saying something, eh? A lawyer trusting another lawyer! Maybe it’s a first.

There’s another situation where they good guys did the right thing, even though they didn’t have to and everything worked out for the better. According to the Bible, our heavenly Father had a chat with His Son Jesus and they worked out a plan to pay the price for us.

As I understand the way things are, after Adam and Eve screwed things up and got booted out of the Garden of Eden, the world was a little different. God and His creation weren’t on particularly good talking terms, and something had to be done. Mankind was all up the Boo-High (where is this place anyway - on the hills above Boo-Low?), so we couldn’t get things right again on our own. These guys’ plan was that . . . well in a nutshell . . . Jesus would pay the price for us so that things could get back on track. So they sent Him down to planet earth and He did it all - just as they had worked out.

I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.
John 17:4

He did the work. He’s paid the price. Now we’ve just gotta do the right thing.

Sounds pretty cool to me.

For years I’ve listened to preachers, teachers, evangelists, missionaries, elders, pastors, and all sorts of, umm . . . “Idiots and Optimists” talk about this story, and despite their best efforts to mess it up (!), it still rings to me as true as it did years ago.

The VICTUS IN AMBITUS way accepts that Jesus did the honourable thing, paying the price for us, and then responds accordingly.