3/29/14

From Jim McGuiggan... OVERDRAWN & UNFORGIVEN?


OVERDRAWN & UNFORGIVEN?

Some time ago we had arranged an overdrawn agreement with the bank and finally were able to end it. What a relief. People become overdrawn at the bank when they ask for more than they have deposited. The cure, the only cure, is to deposit more and make no demands until you’re back in the black. [You may remember Micawber’s astute philosophy on finance.]

People discover that there’s more than one way to be “overdrawn”. They sometimes make too many emotional demands at the wife’s/husband’s emotional bank without making deposits and then wonder why they find themselves overdrawn. She keeps on coming and saying, “Trust me!” and then she abuses that trust—over and over and over again. She writes emotional cheques without making emotional deposits and the bank finally calls a halt to it and she feels mistreated.

He comes tirelessly to make withdrawals at the bank—“forgive me”—but he makes no deposits, gives her no reason to believe he wants to settle the account in an honourable way and when she says she can’t give any more without some deposit of sorts he thinks she’s hard-hearted.

This kind of things not only happens betweens spouses—we see it happen between friends, parents and children, bosses and employees, governments and the governed and even between entire nations. Transgressors bend people until they break and then complain if the broken one can’t act as if unbroken.

Sometimes Christians talk a lot of drivel about “unconditional” love. Those of us who aren’t faced with a steady stream of abuse in some form or other are usually the ones who go on and on about “love must be unconditional”. If you have good reason to be content with your life you tend to love everybody and if your experience with people is characteristically good you’re tempted to feel as Will and Ariel Durant felt. They had met up with so many fine people that, they tell us, they had quite given up on the notion that there were any really wicked people in the world. How can we not be pleased for people whose lives are nicely balanced? We’re not jealous of them—we’re just cautious before accepting their conclusions.

We need to remember, too, that there are bank managers and bank managers. There are those that are hard as flint and quote “the laws of good finance” to justify their refusing to be flexible (not to say “merciful”). There are others with hearts as well as heads and are willing to take the risk of extending help to the overdrawn.

Hmmm.