The Ten Percent: God, Us, and Giving

This isn’t about the one percent or the ninety-nine percent. It’s about the ten percent.

That’s the ten percent that we owe to God.

It’s kind of old-fashioned, that idea. I had a short discussion about it with someone who felt that God did not care if he gave part of his income to God. He felt that his work itself was his offering to the almighty.

That idea, or some form of it, is common.

1. Roads that lead to tithing.

Popular strands of theology support the tithe. Churches that preach the prosperity gospel appeal to the self-interest of their church members. They say that God rewards gifts to the church with prosperity.

Then there’s simple command: Jesus said to do it. (Luke 11:24.)

2. David’s way.

Neither of those ideas should be shunted aside. But King David speaks across the millennia. His words repose in my mind.

David was a giant. His psalms express his love of God. So does his life.

Of course, when he sinned, he sinned big. He had many wives, but he embraced Bathsheba. At the time, Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, David’s servant and a mighty warrior. Bathsheba got David’s child, and David tried to offload credit for the conception onto Uriah, before the child was born. David recalled Uriah from the battlefield and encouraged him to refresh himself with his wife. Uriah wouldn’t do that while his fellow warriors suffered the privations of war. So David told his general, Joab, to make sure that Uriah died in battle. Joab did so; then David married Bathsheba.

But when God rebuked David, David humbled himself before God. That was David’s way.

David could start out wrong-headed, but his endpoint always was humility before God. David wanted to bring the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. He had it put on an oxcart for the journey – the holy, holy ark on a frickin’ oxcart. The oxcart stuttered; one of the men with it reflexedly put his hand on the ark to steady it. He died at that moment. David was furious at God.

But, because he was David, he realized that God was right and he was wrong. He repented. He arranged for the ark to make the rest of the journey on the shoulders of men, accompanied by music and celebration.

But: back to tithing. David wanted to build a house of God. God wouldn’t let him, because he had shed blood in wars. God said that, instead, David’s son Solomon would build God’s house.

But David prepared the way for Solomon to build the house of God. He donated huge amounts of gold and silver and jewels and costly building materials to the project. And he called on the Israelites to do the same. They did.

3. David’s words.

And here’s what David said about the dedication of that wealth to the house of the God of nations:

Blessed be thou, LORD God of Israel our father, for ever and ever.

Thine, O LORD is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O LORD, and thou art exalted as head above all.

Both riches and honor come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thine hand is power and might; and in thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength to all.

Now therefore, our God, we thank the, and praise thy glorious name.

But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.

For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.

O LORD our God, all this store that we have prepared to build thee an house for thine holy name cometh of thine hand, and is all thine own.

I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart, and hast pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of mine heart, I have willingly offered all these things: and now I have seen with joy thy people, which are present here, to offer willingly unto thee.

O LORD of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart of thy people, and prepare their heart unto thee. [1 Chronicles 29:10-18.]

4. A woman without a name.

There’s a lot to comment on in that. Like, do you see how Jesus took language from verse 1 Chronicles 29:11 into the Lord’s Prayer?

But maybe a woman without a name should put King David into perspective. I’m speaking of a widow mentioned in the gospels of Mark and Luke.

Jesus was in the temple.

And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury.

And he also saw a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites.

And he said, Of a truth I say unto you: that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all:

For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had. [Luke 21:1-4.]

The Bible has an economy of narrative: it says much with little. Maybe that’s so that we can fill the gaps with our wondering. Like, did this woman know, as she cast in her two mites, that she, with her tiny gift, would stand higher than King David in the sight of God? And what was she thinking? Did she know that she could not live on what she had, so she gave all she had to God, her last refuge? Did God move on her heart, in that place, in that moment, to do something in the sight of Jesus, to become a parable and a blessing across the millennia?

This nameless widow is like the King Melchisedek, from the Hebrew Bible, also mentioned in the New Testament letter to the Hebrews. The letter to the Hebrews says that Melchisedek was "Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life . . ." (Hebrews 7:3.) Like King Melchisedek, no-one knows the earthly origin of this poor widow, nor her earthly fate. She came from nowhere and no-one on earth knows what happened to her.

This talk of Melchisedek seems obscure, and I thought about deleting it. Except for two things. The writer of Hebrews compares Melchisedek to Christ, noting that Melchisedek was "King of Salem, which is, King of peace . . .." (Hebrews 7:2.) Also, Abraham, coming from the slaughter of kings, was blessed by this king, and Abraham gave him a tenth of the spoils. So as I wrote this, I discovered a tie-in to tithing that I did not remember when I started writing.

5. The last word.

It’s tempting to give King David the last word, because his love of God was such that I can only pray for. Or, if not David, then it’s tempting to finish with the nameless poor widow who was, in her way, greater than David. Or with Melchisedek, who stands for Christ.

Maybe it’s bad manners, but I’ll take last word myself. The world is needy. It needs what the church offers, however imperfectly the church offers it. It is a privilege, in the name of God, to give to the healing of a hurting world.

The Tip Jar

Whenever a restaurant has a tip jar at the counter, I put something in it. I’m not noble or generous. I just want the only contents of my meal to be "food".

And to that end I always want the cashier to observe my "generosity". The hard part of that is making sure that he sees the dollar drop into the tip jar without making an obvious show of it. I have been known to flutter the dollar over the open maw of the tip jar for a few seconds to ensure that the cashier sees it in his peripheral vision while he pulls my change out of the cash register.

It would be nice to hear a "thank you" when I do that, just so that I can eat my meal with confidence. But sometimes cashiers are as stingy with expressions of gratitude as I am generous (in a coerced kind of way) with my tips.

Today, at lunch, I fluttered my dollar and dropped it. Then the cashier counted out my ten-dollars in change. He gave me a five-dollar bill and five ones. I had seen his change drawer. It had ten-dollar bills. That was a pretty clear suggestion that one or more of those dollars belonged in the tip jar. Failure.

I considered tipping twice – once when he could see it. Jesus said to do your good works in private, where they can be seen by God, not to be praised by man. That doesn’t apply to tipping. In tipping, philosophers rightly might ask, "If a tip falls into the tip jar and the cashier doesn’t see it, does the tip exist?" It’s a matter of perspective.

I considered the possibility that he was manipulating me into over-tipping. But I could see his focus while drawing my change. It was like Jack Bauer defusing an atomic bomb. I should have fluttered longer.

Years ago, I ate at a restaurant and left the tip on the table. Then I paid and left. As I left, the big guy in the next booth had his arm over the seat, toward my table. His arm hovered there as I passed. When I came back to the restaurant on another day, the waitress, the same one that served me before, said "You came back", as if that were a surprise. The guy in the next booth probably got my two dollars. I probably got foreign bio-mass between my burger and bun.

Something like this has happened more than once. So now I always leave the tip when the server is in sight of the table. Sometimes, I even put the tip into his or her hand. Why take a chance?

Back in college, I ate at a restaurant, but I didn’t have small bills for a tip. So I paid at the cashier, and then I returned to the table to leave a tip. But the waitress had already come to the table to collect the tip, and she looked crestfallen to see that there was none. Of course I fixed that.

Some days later, at another restaurant, I ate with my friend Bob. I was telling him that story. Just as I got to the point that I said, "And the waitress looked so hurt", our waitress came to the table to take our orders. Her facial muscles drew her features into the center of her face.

I ordered a turkey avocado sandwich. Bob ordered spaghetti. My avocado slices were rock hard. Bob’s spaghetti sauce was cold. When we complained to the waitress, a police officer from another table came over and asked us, in an accusing way, whether we had a problem. Bless him. The streets of Riverside were safe, so he could spare time to intimidate college students being poorly served at a restaurant. We left a decent tip.

I guess that the moral of the story is this: you can try to do right by God and man, but, against every effort, your good works might be performed in secret.

Riches Quickly Gained are Soon Lost

I’m an authority on romantic relationships in the same way that I’m an authority on what it was like to live through the siege of Leningrad.

Which is to say: I’m not.

But I’ve got opinions.

Every torpedo-holed relationship that I’ve had to swim away from has left an impression on me. That makes my expertise in relationships like a cartoon about Jimmy Carter when he was running for re-election. It showed a sign with a campaign slogan: "Jimmy Carter: This time he’ll get it right."

A few of years ago, I was in a serious relationship with a beautiful professional woman my age. The relationship proceeded very quickly. We had a great rapport. But the relationship also ended quickly. One night, she left my home as if she were being whipped to her car. I tried to phone her, but she put me off. In fact, she put me off so long that by the time that she formally declared that our relationship had no pulse, I had managed to pass through all five stages of grief.

Over time, we’ve talked, and she’s given me a bill of particulars for the breakup. But, ultimately, I think we were too close too soon, and we had forged no tools to solve problems that come with closeness.

Riches quickly gained are soon lost.

The lesson I’ve taken from that relationship is: go slow.

There’s a reason to go slow that is shown by every busted relationship I’ve had. One reason is my fatalism about relationships. Some are inherently sturdy. Some are innately feeble. Only time tells you which your relationship is. You want the sturdy relationship for the long haul.

And you want, of course, the right partner. And who that is just isn’t visible like the bottom of a koi pond. It’s more like California Pacific waters. You might have to go below the surface for a ways to see the bottom.

Exploring those unknown waters should be fun. You might as well enjoy dating. Because the joy of the date might be the only thing you get. This is true because, I think, most relationships don’t work out. There’s no reason to be bitter when that happens. And it isn’t, usually, a judgment on yourself or the person you’re dating. It’s just the way things are. So, be kind, be light, be a person who leaves a good memory even if the relationship goes only so far and no further.

I’ve heard different strategies for dating. One now-famous one is to subtly undermine your date’s self-esteem. Another one has been called "wantless-ness" – sort of a zen approach.

When I was a child, I was in a sporting-goods store. There was a glass case with fishing lures. The fishing lures were all colors and sizes; some were simple, some were complex. I asked the counter-clerk what kind of fishing lure someone should buy. He said that depended on what kind of fish he wanted to catch.

This is the kind of fish that I want to catch: the kind that will study me and make her goal to make my life good, as far as she is able. That will also be my goal for her. That idea made it easy for me to accept the end of my relationship with the beautiful professional woman I spoke about at the outset. Because, whatever reasons she gave me, I realized that she did not believe that I was adding value to her life. Therefore, there was no reason to go on with the relationship. It was that simple.

When I was much younger, I was fascinated by women who had no interest in me. I now look back at my younger self and wonder if blood was getting to my brain. Sometimes, I would, in a stroke of clarity, realize that this person was not interested in me, and I would abandon hope and cease to pursue her. Oddly, that sometimes provoked in this or that woman's interest in me. When that happened, I would renew my own interest in her. But then, somewhat predictably, she would again loose interest in me. Happily, things never worked out. I can’t imagine being married to a woman to whom I had to be indifferent or feign indifference.

Mutual interests: key. Different interests: also key. A habit of loyalty: essential. Love: irreplaceable. The mutual interests become clear pretty quickly. Loyalty you have to learn about. Love comes later and cannot be rushed.

There are a lot of guys on probation that now know that the loneliness of single-hood is better than a bad marriage. But every marriage is an act of faith and hope. You do not know what the future holds. Nobody can be certain that a relationship will be happy. All you can do is to try to be shrewd about who you walk into undiscovered country with.

Nightfall

I walked to Trader Joe’s to buy dinner. On the way, I passed a bar. Men gathered around the bar’s door to smoke. I heard a flash of conversation.

One of the men complained that "the currency from the Federal Reserve" was "worthless".

Mind you, this man was outside of a bar. He was probably drinking. I doubt that he paid for his beers with Krugerrands. I doubt that he paid for his beers with chickens, or Chiclets, or other barter. Same with his cigarettes, his clothes, and the motor vehicle that he used to drive to the bar.

The bartender took his "currency" and gave him beer. Walmart took his "currency" and gave him jeans. Boot Barn did the same with his footwear. And (shall we say) Harley Davidson was not different.

All of his material needs are met with currency. Yet, to him, this "Federal Reserve" currency – I assume he meant dollars – to him was "worthless".

How so?

1. Devaluation of facts.

I am amazed. I wilt with ignorance. Where does the hard-right get its facts? The hard-right is convinced that a white American woman from Kansas traveled to Kenya to give birth to her child, who would become president of The United States. But if a birth certificate from Hawaii and birth announcements in the Honolulu papers don’t convince them otherwise, "proof" ain’t the point.

I was mugged by a stranger on Facebook. On the way to some serious insults, he pointed out that the Communist Manifesto endorsed confiscatory, progressive income taxes. He pointed out that liberals believed in progressive income taxes. So he concluded that communists and liberals were the same. Never mind that private enterprise is a basic tenet of liberalism. Never mind that the opposite is true of Marxism. It’s a little like saying that Charles Manson and Roman Polanski were big in Sharon Tate’s life, so Charles Manson and Roman Polanski are the same.

(On the other side of the political spectrum, a visiting Marxist (I think) professor taught an economics class at UCR when I was a student there. He claimed that there was no difference between conservatives and liberals. He made this claim by presenting scraps of similar-sounding rhetoric from liberals and conservatives.)

Before I eavesdropped on the political sages outside the bar, I passed a protest on two corners of Orange Street and Redlands Boulevard in Redlands. It was more loud than big. There were, on the two corners, maybe thirty people. But some of them had bullhorns.

And the bullhorn-magnified speakers proclaimed that Barack Obama was a "socialist" and a "communist". Yet I’ve never seen convincing proof of that. (Oh, yeah, aside from progressive income taxes – I forgot).

So I conclude that facts are not the issue, and proof is not important, as a basis for opinions from my hard-right cohorts.

3. The rise of collective opinion.

If their opinions aren’t based on fact, what then?

I’ve heard that morality is a group phenomenon. More than religion, more than education, the people around you, and what they do, determine your ethics.

I think the same is true of opinions. Rightly or wrongly, it seems to me that searching for proof and counter-proof is not the method of the hard-right. Evidence, like a birth certificate, like a birth announcement, is, to them, beside the point.

They don’t trust such facts. They trust their hard-right cohorts. What matters is consensus. Those who accuse Barack Obama of creeping collectivism themselves find certainty in collective opinions.

So far as I can tell, the sources of their collective opinions are their friends, their families, right-wing media, and the internet. You can point out that when NBC distorts the news, somebody gets fired; but when Fox News distorts the news, Sean Hannity makes a joke about it – it doesn’t matter. There is trust. There is faith in the collective opinion that is its own proof.

4. Am I a hypocrite?

The hard-right is a religion. Like a religion, it has a body of believers. This body of believers shares a (to them) un-assailable gnosis.

I’m a believer, so I accept the truth of Christianity. I trust the Bible. I trust Paul when he says that Christians "walk by faith, not by sight". (2 Cor. 5:7.) I trust Paul when he asks "Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" (1 Cor. 1:20.) But I don’t accept that modes of Christian thought apply to all ideologies.

So I wonder: am I a hypocrite for accepting a mode of thought for my religion that I deny to the hard-right for their politics?

Must I accept the acceptableness of believing without proof that the president was born in Kenya, because I accept that Jesus was crucified, rose from the dead, and now is crowned king of heaven?

If not, why not?

I’m not sure that I know the answer to that.

5. Judgment.

But I wonder: how far does this mode of thought properly extend?

I practice law for a living. My clients sometimes are judged by the twelve. I hope that the twelve form their collective judgment by hearing the law and examining the evidence. But I know that some jurors decide cases based on habitual deference to the government, especially as against a, to them, unattractive defendant – unattractive by race, unattractive by occupation, or unattractive by personal appearance. You hope to weed out these people in jury selection, but you can’t always.

6. All roads lead to war.

The endpoint of this collective mode of measuring reality is that facts don’t matter; only opinion matters – especially the opinion of trusted cohorts.

Maybe that is why politics has become so nasty and so personal. The battle is no longer over facts; the tools of debate aren’t the tools of investigation. Instead, the battle is the battle of a cohort with opinions struggling to monopolize the pool of opinions by marginalizing the opposite cohort. This war of one cohort against the other has supplanted, in the minds of some, the idea of public debate as a quest for truth. Politics for many has become more nakedly a quest for dominance among cohorts.

The struggle is not a struggle for proof or truth; it is a struggle to undermine opponents, to silence their opinions, to make them, in one way or another, shut up.

This mode of politics explains the politics of character-crushing falsehoods. It explains effort by Republican legislatures to deprive democratic constituencies of their voting franchise.

Because once politics becomes untethered to the truth, it becomes important to silence any innocent who might call attention to factual nakedness. Orwell lives.

7. Equality is right and fair.

In the meantime, there is a leveling quality to collective opinion: my opinion, supported by carefully uncovered credible sources with reputations for accuracy to protect, is entitled to no more weight than a vaguely-sourced rumor repeated on U-Tube by a man in a cowboy hat who claims to be a retired U.S. Marshall.

Certainly, between my opinion and the opinion of the man in the cowboy hat, there is an equality at the ballot box. His vote counts the same as mine. And when that happens, the system is working as it was designed to work.

My love of democracy permits no other opinion.

8. What is truth?

What is truth, then? The truth is that, in my opinion, I am lucky that I have the training that I have. It gives me skills to investigate and evaluate sources, however imperfect those skills are.

The truth is that, in my opinion, I am lucky that I have friends who are like-minded. The truth is that, in my opinion, I have a duty to try to reproduce what skills I have in the world.

And the truth is that, in my opinion, based on my theology, the collective mind of America will be only as clear as God permits it to be. We should celebrate clear thought, as much as we have it, while we can. For "the night cometh, when no man can work." (John 9:4.)

Signs of Evil Rising

Since I became a lawyer, I have known that this is true: Nobody who casually tears another person’s character has integrity.

I discovered this with lawyers. What evil they did, they would accuse me of. To be in court with such a person was to be deluged with false accusations.

And these lawyers always were without integrity.

1. Evil rising.

I met few lawyers like that in my early years of law. They are common now.

But it’s not just lawyers. It’s everybody.

A friend of mine on Facebook posted a sign of a protestor. His sign said, "I was sent to Iraq to remove a dictator. I won’t tolerate one here." My friend thought that this was the greatest sign about Barack Obama ever.

I started a thread. I asked my friend: "How is a man elected by a strong majority of the popular and electoral vote, who is subject to the judicial process, who can only sign laws sent to him by Congress, who is subject to reelection, who governs in a country with a vigorous free press and a strong opposition party, who governs in a country where this man can protest and you can post his picture -- how is this man a ‘dictator’? Because he seems to be the opposite of a ‘dictator’."

My friend expressed pity at my ignorance.

Maybe he thinks I miss his point. Maybe the point isn’t that Barack Obama is an honest-to-God dictator. Maybe the point was the primal delight in calling the president something so vile. Maybe the very point was the ridiculousness of the claim. Maybe the delight of the sign is the idea: "I just called the president a ‘dictator’. If you don’t like it, you can’t stop me!"

This is typical. The epithets change. "Socialist". "[Democratically elected] tyrant." Now, "Dictator".

What I learned early as a lawyer still holds true. To tear a persons character without cause is the act of a person of low morals. Vicious and clearly-false attacks on the president are the water pulling back from the shoreline when a tsunami is on its way. They are the air-raid siren that tells you to go into a bomb shelter. In The Good Earth, Pearl Buck’s main character, a shrewd farmer, looked at the moisture on rocks and knew that a stormy season was coming.

The vicious vitriol of everyday Americans is the moisture under rocks that speaks of evil times coming.

2. Politics sinking.

And it’s not just people I know from Facebook. It’s national, state, and local politicians. It’s major news networks. Fox News even broadcasted photoshopped photos of two New York Times reporters that it was angry at. Both men are handsome. But they look like monsters in the photoshopped pictures.

We are a nation in moral decline.

3. We’re boned.

We’re boned.

I’m sure that I don’t have to explain that. I’m not a big fan of Richard Nixon, but he was right when he quoted Alexis de Tocqueville: "America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

There have been books lately about the rise and fall of nations. I’m sure they are smart. I haven’t read any of them.

I have my own ideas of why nations rise and fall. I believe that nations rise and fall according to God’s will.

4. God’s hand upon us.

I see in America’s path the hand of God. I see him raising up leaders, irreplaceable leaders, just when we needed them.

He gave us George Washington when we needed George Washington. Militarily, Washington was not brilliant. But he was good enough. And he understood that the battle for independence was a battle for the hearts and mind of the American people. He won that battle, and he won the Revolutionary War.

We have the form of government that we have, with a necessarily strong executive, directly because of Washington. When the writers of the Constitution were writing Article II, about the executive branch, they had in mind George Washington. They trusted him, so they empowered the executive. We have benefitted ever since.

When we needed Abraham Lincoln, God gave us Abraham Lincoln. Wars had never been as bloody as the Civil War. It was tempting to let the South go it’s own way. But Lincoln was firm, and, ultimately, the lowly of the North trusted "Father Abraham". Lincoln was strong, wise, and smart, and we might never have had a president with his capabilities, so suited to the needs of the time.

At the beginning of World War II, America thought that it was a European and Asian matter. Franklin D. Roosevelt knew better. He knew that if we did not fight Hitler in Europe in his generation, America would fight him on America’s territory in the next generation. So he maneuvered Japan into attacking us. He led America into war, and in war, and he did so brilliantly. FDR was God’s gift to America in his time.

4. God does not abide with nations forever.

But God does not abide with a nation forever, regardless of what that nation does. Israel and Judah show this. These were nations that he established in biblical times. He protected them. But when they abandoned him, he abandoned them (though he preserved a remnant of them through the generations).

How serious is it that truth is no longer the currency of politics? The Bible says that Satan is a "liar and the father of lies." When we lie for gain, including political gain, we show who’s true children we are.

5. Turn back.

I urge: let’s turn back.

We must not assume that God needs us, and that he will tolerate us regardless of what we do. If we think like that, we are like the Jews who said, "We have Abraham for a father." But John the Baptist said, "God can raise children of Abraham from these stones."

To think that God will bless America regardless of what America does is foolish. It’s time to humble ourselves before the Lord. Not before Ayn Rand. Not before Saul Alinsky. Not before Fox News. Before God.

And maybe he will have mercy upon us.

Vanity

I have a small drawer of bow ties. It turns out that I trip over these little strips of cloth.

1. The apple in the garden.

I went to the website of a very good bow tie vendor: beautiesltd.com. I looked at what they had. And one of their new bow ties was, to me, breathtakingly beautiful. It was a striking green with a paisley pattern in it. The website said it would go well with a camel jacket.

Bulls-eye. I often wear a camel jacket.

Two other ties also made me covet. They were striped. In some corner of my mind, I thought: What if I get interviewed for television? Stripes are good on television.

But when I was about to buy the ties, I hesitated. That happened two or three times in a row. So I decided to decide about the buying the ties in the morning.

In the morning, I still hesitated. Good bow ties are not cheap. And I didn’t need more of them.

2. Personal history comes to mind.

Still, I was about to place the order, and a memory popped into my mind. It was from when I was seven. Mom had started a small savings-account for each of us children, my brothers and me. Then, in a store, we saw a toy: it was a plastic cap with a whirligig on top. It had a string attached. You pulled the string, and the whirligig spun and lifted off of your head and flew up in the air. It was called a Beanie Cap, after the headgear worn by Beanie, a character in the much-beloved cartoon-show Beanie and Cecil.

My brother Erik and I wanted one. We told Mom that we wanted to take money from the bank to buy the toy.

Mom was vexed. She had started the bank accounts to teach us to be frugal. But we were spending the money on what was to her a dumb toy. But she had told us that the money was ours, so, pissed, she took us to the bank to withdraw the money for the dumb toy. A bank manager admonished Erik and me. He told us, "Money is for saving, not spending." Erik and I did not listen to him.

The toys were ours. But not for long. Erik and I spun our whirligigs, and the wind carried them up on the roof of our house. We pleaded with Mom to ask Dad to go on the roof to get them. She refused.

3. I buy the bow tie.

That story is what I remembered after I had entered my credit-card information and was about to place the order for the bow ties. But I placed the order anyway.

4. A lesson is learned.

I’ve thought about why I made such an unnecessary purchase that I knew better than to make. At first, I thought that the problem was that I’m a spendthrift: buying unneeded furnishings instead of saving for a needful day. That’s certainly correct.

But the tie-purchase came from a mixture of shortcomings. Yes, I spent money that I shouldn’t have. But the ties also represent vanity.

I like wearing bow ties. I like the compliments I get about them. I study myself in the mirror after I put on a bow tie. Vanity.

My vanity reveals itself other ways. I’m happy that, as I exercise and control my diet, my abdomen is growing tauter. I check out my shrinking belly in a mirror at the health club. I look at myself, shirtless, at home.

The problem is that when I yield to vanity, vanity crowds out what matters: personal relationships, work, God.

5. Looking at cures.

So I’m trying to correct this character defect. I’m trying to slough off care about how I look, or to bring it to an tolerable level. That means fewer trips to the mirror. And I’d rather have people think that my shirt doesn’t match my jacket, rather than give in to the self-regard that obsesses about the impression that my clothes make. I need to walk away from vanity. Maybe I need to run away from it.
I wonder if the cure will make me have to give up those things that feed my vanity, like swimming and wearing bow ties. I haven’t decided to do that, but the cure would be worth the cost. Maybe I should.

6. Summing up.

It would have been better for me not to have succumbed to being a spendthrift and being a peacock by buying those bow ties. But I am slightly compensated because that purchase exposed a blotch on my character.

7. Scripture knocks.

After I wrote this piece this morning, I read some scripture while waiting for the Easter service to start. I read 2 Kings 20. That chapter is about Hezekiah, king of Judah. He was much loved by God. In fact, when he was on his death-bed, he prayed to God, and God granted him fifteen more years of life. He stands out among other Kings of Israel and Judah, most of whom were rotters.

Ambassadors from Babylon came to Hezekiah with gifts. He showed them his gold, and his silver, and all of his treasures. Vanity.

Because of this, the Prophet Isaiah, with a message from God, told Hezekiah that Babylon would loot his treasures, and that his sons would be eunuchs in Babylon.

Lest anyone take vanity lightly.

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Appendectomy

Millions of Americans don’t have health insurance. Some can’t afford it. Some can’t be bothered. But their failure or refusal to buy insurance has real-world consequences. These consequences show how silly it is to compare the insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act to forcing people to eat broccoli.

1. Health problems have a fiendish way of assailing the un-prepared.

Refusing to buy health insurance is no guarantee that you’ll never need a doctor. Health problems are ornery that way. Sometimes they plague people who aren’t prepared for them.

So a young man or a young woman might assume that youth and apparent good-health make health insurance a low priority – low enough to be left alone. Yet that mischief-maker Loki might strike him or her, rudely, with a heart attack, cancer, or appendicitis.

And then this man or this woman has a choice: go to the emergency room or go home and die.

Few choose death.

2. Treatment will cost money, even for the un-insured.

And the professionals in the emergency room will treat this sick young person. This treatment might occupy one or more surgeons, a team of nurses, and other health-care providers. It might require a surgery theater and a hospital bed. All of that costs money. It costs lots and lots of money.

3. The cost of treating the un-insured doesn’t go away.

Someone will pay for it.

Now, if this young man or young woman is rich, he or she can write a check on the way out of the hospital. But most people aren’t rich.

So he or she likely will end up getting a bill that is as light as a few sheets of paper, but that is heavy enough to burden him or her until a doctor is superfluous but an undertaker is necessary.

This person can do one of several things.

This person can wad up the bill and toss it in the trash. And he or she can do the same when the next bills come, regularly, in the mailbox. And this person can try to spend the rest of his or her life going out the back door when the bill collector knocks on the front door. Good luck with that.

Or this person can spend the rest of his or her life paying off the debt. Fine. And, maybe, if this person has money left at the end of each month, he or she might buy health insurance. Otherwise, that mischief-maker Loki, in the form of more health emergencies, might upend this person’s life again. And again.

Or this person can declare bankruptcy. The debt might be discharged. Forgiven, but not forgotten.

Not forgotten because somehow that bill will be paid for. Somehow, those surgeons, those doctors, and those nurses will be compensated for their time. There’s no such thing as a free appendectomy.

Maybe some government program will pay for it. In that case, the cost gets passed on to the taxpayers. As much as people complain that the Affordable Care Act is socialism, it's closer to socialism when somebody claims "free" medical care, paid for by the government. I do not understand why people hate supposed "socialism", the Affordable Care Act, but tolerate something closer to socialism.

Or maybe no free government program will pay for the surgery and the aftercare. In that case, the hospital will pass the cost on to paying customers. Paying customers pick up the cost of the un-insured by paying higher prices for medical care.

True, some needy people get subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. But, now, even persons who can afford health-insurance can get subsidised by taxpayers or by paying health-care consumers.

4. Justice Scalia’s broccoli metaphor is manure.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is now notorious for comparing the insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act to the government forcing people to eat broccoli. But there’s no comparison

This is true because if you or I choose not to eat broccoli, that affects nobody else. Broccoli-refusers don’t become a weight around the neck of taxpayers. Broccoli-refusers don’t force broccoli-vendors to raise the price of broccoli to paying customers.

Some people might force broccoli-vendors to raise their prices. A particularly aggressive broccoli shoplifter might force a broccoli-vendor to raise his price, because of all of the broccoli that disappears into the shoplifter’s booster bag. The economic effect of such a shoplifter to a broccoli-vendor is like the economic effect of a health-care free-rider to a hospital.

Frankly, Antonin Scalia is a brilliant man. He knows that the broccoli metaphor is bonkers. His argument was a stunt. The brilliance of this stunt is that he has made so many people think that the insurance mandate is like making people eat broccoli.

Some people eat broccoli; some people don’t. I happen to like it, but some people hate it.

But health insurance is not broccoli. Almost everyone will get health care at some time in their life. Like, for example, at the beginning of it.

And it will be paid for somehow. The un-insured will burden the rest of society. That burden will come in the form taxpayer contributions to their health; or it will come in the form of higher prices that paying health-care consumers pay to offset the cost of free-riders.

5. Justice Scalia, try again.

So, thanks for playing, Justice Scalia. But now that you have a vital job with life tenure, and an intellect that is truly impressive, try thinking for yourself instead of channeling Tea-Party-endorsed talking points.

Taxpayers and paying health-care consumers will thank you.

Where Are Bears When You Need Bears?

It’s sad that decency is mired in thick mud while selfishness prances with ballet slippers on shiny floors.

1.  (Not) Squeezing in.

I finished a swim meet at UCLA at about the time that a nearby softball tournament ended. Some 40 cars were lined up to leave the parking lot I was in. A long line of cars crawled along the road past the parking lot, and their drivers did not let drivers from the parking lot squeeze into the road.

While I waited for ten minutes, the parking-lot line of cars did not move. So I re-parked my car and hiked across campus into Westwood to enjoy an early dinner. That seemed to be a better idea than staring glumly at an unmoving line of cars.

2.  No peace to piss.

Close to the UCLA campus, I found an In-N-Out Burger restaurant. Great: decent food modestly priced. I ordered my burger-fries-and-shake and headed to the men’s room while my meal was being made. I had to wait in a short line outside the men's room. The men's room took one person at a time.

At my turn, I went in and locked the door behind me. I was in the bathroom briefly, and suddenly there was a busy pounding on the door. A young voice demanded to know if there was somebody in the men’s room. It sounded some eleven-to-twelve years old. I raised my voice and said that the bathroom was occupied.

That didn’t stop the pounding or the voice. The pounding continued, and the youngster said that he couldn’t hear me.

I doubt that that was true. I had raised my voice. And I could hear him fine. And I was in a bathroom, not a bank vault. But I raised my voice again, and said that the men’s room was occupied.

The pounding and importuning continued. Then, one last time, I said that the men’s room was occupied. I said it loud enough to be heard in the control tower of Los Angeles International Airport. (First air-traffic controller: "Hey, Bob, what was that?" Second air-traffic controller: "I don’t know, Burt, but he sounds enraged!") The pounding and the voice stopped.

A short time later, when I left the men’s room, I expected to see my tormentor. But the hallway outside the men’s room was empty. I walked into the dining area, and I looked through the glass doors in the front of the restaurant. A gaggle of eleven-to-twelve-year-old boys stood outside looking in, pensively. They soon left.

3.  Diverted by a littlle girl.

As I thought about being hectored in the men’s room, I was annoyed. Then, as I stood waiting for my order to be called, a young man with two little daughters asked me if I was waiting to order. I said, "No", and he moved forward to the cashier. But his daughters apparently did not see him move forward. He was wearing jeans, and I was wearing jeans. One of his little daughters pressed her arms against my leg until her father saw her and called her to him. That made me smile. When I grew irked at the men’s room incident, I remembered that little girl, and then I wasn’t irked.

4.  Meditation: cars, bears, and youngters.

After a satisfying, simple meal, I walked back to my car. I thought about three things.

First, I noticed that people who parked in the street along the campus parked in a way that people in front or behind them couldn’t move their cars. There was no room to maneuver away from the curb. I thought this was odd.

Second, I remembered a story of the prophet Elisha. He was walking, and a crowd of little children followed him, mocked him, and called out, "Go up, bald head! Go up, bald head!" Elisha turned and cursed them. Then two bears came out of the woods and tore 42 of them. (2 Kings 2:23-24.)

I don’t understand that story. I suppose it warns that, in the words of C.S. Lewis in The Chronicles of Narnia, God is not a "tame lion". But at least now I better understand Elisha’s annoyance..

Third, I thought about the youngster pounding on the men’s room door, trying to vex me into rushing. I wondered what kind of manners he’d learned from his parents. I wondered if he would grow up and be a judge who demanded that every lawyer be in his courtroom right on time, with no excuses, with no slack for any lawyer who had to be in another courtroom.

I wondered if the youngster’s urgency did not come from a sense that his business in the men’s room was more important than anyone else’s, but from an affection for his friends that made him hate to make them wait. No way of knowing, of course. I said a prayer for him.

Why not? I couldn’t call bears to tear him.