Everybody wants a deal.
Deals to get more for our money, to get more money for our work, to be
able to have things we shouldn’t be able to afford. Deals are short cuts. They let us cut corners. They make allowances where there should be
none. Some students in my classes look
for better grades for less work. They
want to be able to get away with absences, missing homework. It seems that the ends do justify the
means. According to this approach to
living it doesn’t seem necessary for us to live up to standards of decency, or
personal ethics as long as we get our car, our clothes, our flat screen TV’s,
our grades, our time off.
It disappoints me when my students try to work deals with
me. But when their parents start calling
me, telling me that their children really should get a better grade because
they don’t get anything but A’s, then I start wondering if they’re living in a
fantasy land that doesn’t even require deals to make things work. No wonder their kids don’t even see the need
to use spell check.
I think that’s the kind of strange place that people
often use when they attend church, or profess a set of beliefs. It’s like a magic wand that they wave to get
what they want, or to make things easy.
It doesn’t matter what the scientists say, or whether the ice caps are
melting, global warming has nothing to do with how many cars my family drives
or my carbon footprint. I can have what
I want because I’m a Christian. I never
picked that up in the gospels. But then again, I’m lousy at making deals.
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