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- Written by: John Rae
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At one point I was in the business of setting up accounting software used in inventory management. The Cost of Goods Sold calculation had a factor called “Normal Spoilage” which was set at 2 out of every 100 units in inventory. That 2% was always written off in the profit calculations as either being lost or unsellable goods.
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- Written by: John Rae
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In Luke 11:23, Jesus says, “Whoever does not gather with me scatters.” What is Jesus talking about? A journey into linguistics might help. When we use the word ‘symbol’ in English, we usually mean that something just represents something else, as when we say that a flag symbolizes a nation. In practice, we tend to make an absolute distinction between the symbolic and the real, but this is not the case with linguistics! The opposite of the symbolic is not the real but the diabolic. Symbolic means to throw together (to gather) and diabolic means to throw apart (to scatter). Our word ‘devil’ comes from the Greek word diabolos. Proverbs 6:19 refers to the devil (or diabolos) as, “A lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family.” The devil wants to make us scatterbrained, unable to function as true sons and daughters of God. In the story of the Gerasene demoniac in Luke 8, Jesus casts out the devils from a truly dysfunctional fellow. At the end of the story, we see him sitting at the feet of Jesus “in his right mind”. His scatterbrained days are behind him.
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- Written by: John Rae
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Given the current state of the world, bewilderment might be the next pandemic. Catholic scholar Luke Burgis makes an interesting comment about how people deal with disorder in their lives. Many people who aren’t spiritual eventually become numb. Just think of the confessional lyrics from the rock band Pink Floyd: “The dream is gone / I have become comfortably numb”.
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- Written by: John Rae
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1 Chronicles 21:1 states: “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to count the people of Israel.” This did not go over well with God, and he let David know this. So, in verse 8 David says, “I have sinned greatly by taking this census. Please forgive my guilt for doing this foolish thing.” Previously though, in the book of Exodus, God had commanded Moses to preform a count (census) of the people just before the building of the Tabernacle. What was the difference?
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- Written by: John Rae
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Catholic philosopher Remi Brague makes an interesting observation: “…in Spain, when a cab is for hire and looking for a customer, it has a flag of sorts on which is written “FREE”. For many of our contemporaries the model of what “being free” means is the way in which this cab is “free”. This means that it is empty, that it doesn’t go to any particular place.” In a sense you are indeed “free”, but you don’t have a life. A cab that does nothing more than flying its “FREE” flag will end up not servicing any customers and will go bankrupt. From his “Slow Train Coming” album, the songwriter Bob Dylan writes:
