It all started last Saturday, I was at work [Family Video]
when a lady came in with a copy of Sherlock Holmes that froze on her. I cleaned the disc and then put it into our
DVD player to see if it fixed the issue, it did not, in fact it seemed to make
it a little worse that it was.
Unfortunately that was the only copy that we had, so I couldn’t give her
another one, the store across town also only had one and it was rented. She had rented both the first and second
Sherlock Holmes and so I asked me what she should do, I told her that if she
wanted to she could bring the second one back and I would credit it to her
account also, but I also said, ‘Just so you know, you don’t have to watch the
first to enjoy the second.’ I thought I
was being helpful, I have told many people the same thing about both Holmes as
well as many other movies that are sequels to the Character but not the story. I found out on Monday that this was not only
not helpful to her, but it made her angry.
To this end on her new customer survey she wrote ‘Retrain Kenny, he has
a bad attitude.’
Also on Monday another customer yelled at me because I was
[get this] being intimidating to her, a woman, because I said that the guy who
checked her out last time was me. We
were having a conversation about late fees, I told her I said one thing, she
told me I said something else, so I was being intimidating. I was going to take the late fees off and
even give her the current items for free but because I was intimidating she
said to just close her account and she would never come back to a place that
was intimidating to women.
I assume that most of you who are reading this know me and
know that I am not in the least bit intimidating, I am in fact the guy that
walks away when things don’t go my way, hardly ever complaining to the people
who do wrong to me [just ask Mary it infuriates her sometimes]. To this end I am pretty sure that this was
the first time that anyone has ever accused me of being intimidating. The fact of the matter is that I may have
actually been rude to her a little bit, I was angry that she was calling me a
liar, maybe she was angry that I was calling her one, which I suppose I
inadvertently was, only one of us could be telling the truth after all.
Then Monday night I was working with a coworker who came in
and said that I need to pick your brain as a pastor. This coworker proceeded to tell me that
something was about to happen that their family did not approve of, and one family
member told this coworker that if it happened God would punish them, and told a
story of God’s punishment. The family
member said that when he was younger he had moved in with his girlfriend and
that God gave this girlfriend cancer in order to punish him. My coworker asked me if God did punish people
like that.
I don’t understand the belief that God is some kind of kid
with a magnifying glass and we are the ants that occasionally piss him
off. I mean do you really think that God
works that way? And even if he did why
wouldn’t he give the guy the cancer, I mean it’s pretty twisted to cause the
girlfriend to have cancer just so the guy could hurt. In addition, don’t you think that if that was
the way that God was we would almost all be in punishment constanly? Wouldn’t Earth be Hell then? Wouldn’t he just start zapping people left
and right every time they said ‘Jesus Christ’ in the not nice way? If it really worked that way we wouldn’t
need police or jails or even a justice
system because God would just single handedly take care of it all.
After all if living together is worth cancer what is
thievery or murder worth? Should they
just be cast with boils or leprosy or ebola or something pretty bad? Or maybe God does work that way but instead of
the guilty being hurt he just goes for their loved ones, I mean why else would
kids get cancer? It must be the case of
their parents sin, or their siblings, or maybe just a close family friend who
would be sad that they are hurting. I
mean get real, where does it end?
Wouldn’t God be punishing us every second of every day for every time we
sin against him? I’m a pastor and I’m
not perfect, I still screw up, why isn’t God punishing me more severely? Or is
it coming?
I gotta tell you that I do not live in fear of my God,
because my God sent Jesus who by his journey, his life, his words, his actions,
his death, and his resurrection have convinced me that God is in the love and
forgiveness business, not the fear and punishment one.
Peace and Love,
Pastor K
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