Learning God's Precepts

 

Mark 8:36-37 (KJV) For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? ³⁷ Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Both my parents were businessmen, so almost all my life I’ve heard the term “bad business” in many variations thrown around in our home. If they decided to sell a product and the profit margin wasn’t enough to cover the running cost of carrying said product it was considered “bad business”.

Or if they had to exchange one product for another they were carrying and this new one didn’t bring in as much profit as the one discontinued, then it was also called “bad business” because even though it did bring in some value, it made the entire business less profitable as a whole.

So, when I first truly encountered these verses, one of the phrases that came into my mind was “bad business”. And as the child of a businessmen, it was kind of hard for me to fully grasp that receiving the whole world could termed bad business.

Let me paint a scenario – you sell a product that costs you $100 to produce for $120, on the surface, it looks like you’re making a profit, but if upon further examination, you realize that the logistics of selling that product comes to $25, then you realize pretty quickly that you’re actually selling at a loss.

So, you decide to increase its price to $150, seems fair and you’re no longer running at a loss, but you notice that at the end of every month you don’t have enough money to pay your own bills. The bills of the business are fully paid, but what’s left can’t pay your rent. This is when you come to the realization that though the business seems profitable because it’s able to pay its other bills and still have something left, but you were not factored in as one of the bills of the business. And since this is what you spend all your time doing, is the business profitable if it can’t pay you to live? No, it’s not.

So now you factor in your time and increase the product’s price to $175. Now you can pay all bills – yours and your business’ – and all seems well. If you want to do more than just pay all bills but now want the ability to put away a nest egg, then maybe you’ll increase the price to 200. And on it goes.

Please note that in all of this you have been adjusting the selling price of the product based on what you thought wanted to get at the end of the day.

Now back to the Mark 8: 36-37.

Apple, one of the most profitable businesses is worth about 3.83 trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money. And God took a look at that and said to me that if I were to exchange my soul for the entirety of Apple that that would be bad business. In fact, if I were to exchange my soul for all the companies listed on the NY Stock exchange which currently has a 30 trillion-dollar market cap, God still considers that as bad business.

How that that be bad business? I think 30 trillion dollars is good money, no single person on earth has that much money and yet God still considers it bad business. Why?

Because even though we may not know the value of our souls, God does. He sees what we cannot see and says that if I were to exchange my life for all the money in all the banks in the world, or all the lands in the earth, or all the companies in the world, or everything available for sale in all the world, that I’ve been cheated and was underpaid in that exchange.

That though it looked profitable on the surface, that there’s so much more that I can not see that makes that exchange unprofitable.

What are you exchanging for your soul today that looks reasonable. Almost none of us would exchange our soul for something that was obviously unreasonable, but what if it was cloaked in reasonability?

Have we exchanged our souls to pay our bills? Seems reasonable enough, our bills must be paid or how else will we live. Plus, we’re not even being greedy by asking for the whole world – we just want to pay our bills and be comfortable.

Have we exchanged our souls for our children – after all children are a gift from God and we have a responsibility towards them. Maybe we’ve exchanged our souls for friends, good friends who’ve been there for us through thick and thin. Or maybe it’s our position at work that represents something no one else in our family has ever attained. Or maybe it’s even calling, or our health/fitness.

All these seem reasonable to slowly prioritize the highest in our lives but if only we could (like God) see what the cost was to our soul, we would realize immediately that it was bad business, very bad business, and that Satan is cheating us immensely with these “reasonable” offers.

“You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”

34Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. 35If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. 

Mark 8:33b - 35

It’s time to stop participating in Satan’s (the enemy of our soul) bad business. Turn to Jesus today and receive the full value of your soul.