Jeremiah 29:11

Drudge links to a remarkable story today. Some guy got involved with a woman who had student loans she wasn’t paying off, and a SWAT team broke into his house in the middle of the night to search the place. They put him in a patrol car and left him there for six hours. The part where they attacked him and not her makes perfect sense. This is the government we’re talking about. The people liberals trust to solve their problems.

I had no idea Uncle Sam got this crabby about getting his money! I know some people who might want to start wearing expensive underwear, so they look their best when the cops drag them outside at 4 a.m.

Student loans are bad news. You can’t get out of them by declaring bankruptcy or crying poverty. You pretty much have to be dead or dying in order to get forgiveness. If you don’t pay, the interest just keeps building, and then Sallie Mae gives up and adds it to the principal. Then they have the right to charge you interest on the interest you didn’t pay. So you can turn a $100,000 debt into $200,000, if you really try. And the IRS can come in and collect by force, so even if you turn your life around, you may find yourself taking home a tiny piece of a big paycheck. Welcome to sharecropping.

I know someone who has a 16-year-old debt which amounts to at least $190,000. I don’t think it could have been more than $100,000 to start with. And this is someone who had the money to pay. Go figure. Obama might as well hogtie and brand this individual, because until that money rolls in, this person is a slave.

The only good thing about the SWAT story is that the victim may have a lawsuit which will turn his six hours of captivity into a nice retirement account. Meanwhile, his ex may be in for some interesting times.

It’s encouraging to see the government making a serious effort to get our money back. That much, I will give them. I didn’t think they were trying very hard.

I no longer believe in borrowing. I’ve done some dumb things. I bought $1500 speakers with loan money. But I now believe that borrowing is a good way to curse yourself. Even mortgages and car loans. We have gotten so used to buying things we can’t afford, we think it’s normal. I disagree. Like the Bible says, “A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.” It also says the borrower is the servant of the lender. If you owe money on your house and car, they’re not yours, no matter how you spin it. Someone else has the power to take them away if you falter. Then where are you?

It’s a lot harder to take what you have when you own it outright. And you won’t find yourself forced to do things you don’t believe in, just to keep the payments up. A man who has a stack of loans is a target for temptation and coercion, just like a politician with dirt in his past. If you’re not in that situation, you are truly blessed.

I always wonder what our streets and parking lots would look like if all the cars that weren’t paid for disappeared.

Christianity is largely about short-term pain in exchange for long-term gain. Debt works the other way around. In Christianity, you give this life to God, and after seventy or a hundred years you get a magnificent, lasting reward. When you borrow, you usually get a car or a crappy stereo or some other trinket that loses value, and you pay much more than it’s worth. You get something better than you deserve, and you get it fast, but it doesn’t last, and you end up worse off in the end.

Christianity is amazing. It frees you from scratching to make this life as good as it can be. If you don’t believe, what is life? Childhood and adolescence are somewhat unpleasant, and during these years, you probably won’t have freedom, success, or wealth. Then you hit your twenties, which are supposed to be the best time of your life. You’re healthy. You look good. You feel good. But you don’t have much by middle-aged standards, and older people boss you around. If you’re really lucky, you have money and other trappings of success by the time you hit 30. If you’re a woman, that gives you about five years to enjoy them before you fall out of the first tier of physical beauty, and you have to get very busy burdening yourself with kids. If you’re a man, you don’t have to worry about that stuff, but you’re still aging.

By 45, you’re over the hill, especially if you’re female. Now it’s time to worry about retirement. But you probably won’t save enough. At this point, you feel like you’re a success on the downhill slope to grey hair and wrinkles, or you feel like you’re a failure who no longer has a chance to make it. If you’re on top, you want to stay there, but time will not leave you alone. Even Madonna, with all her money, can turn into an old woman kids don’t admire any more. Botox, fetal stem cells, collagen, and plastic surgery can’t keep you young.

When old age hits you, it’s time to look at what you have and what you’ve done and decide whether it meant anything. Maybe you have money, but you’re going to die, and your money is going to stay here. Maybe you’ve accomplished a lot in your career, but your career can’t follow you to the grave.

The other day I was flipping channels, and I saw a listing for Teen Wolf. And I couldn’t help thinking how absurd it was, to see yourself as a success because you’ve been in movies. We admire and worship movie stars. But…Teen Wolf? Come on. Is that a legacy? When you think about it, all movies are stupid. Actors stand around playing make-believe, just like kids in a playground. Try it sometime, if you’ve never acted. Read a scene with your friends. You feel silly, right? This is what John Wayne did every day, and we think he’s wonderful. Could anything be more ridiculous? Is that any way to spend a life? And I emphasize the word “spend.”

If you live by the world’s rules, age is your enemy. It takes the things you value. It robs you of looks, health, and social relevance. It takes away your career. It takes away the things you enjoy.

What if you’re a Christian who walks by faith? Different story. Suddenly age is wealth. Your life is measured in eons, not years, so no matter how you see yourself, you are extremely young and full of potential. You’re just getting started. And the things you do have lasting value. God will guide you and help you do things that have lasting impact. You’ll even be able to help people enter paradise, where they’ll be your friends for eternity.

Instead of seeing earthly success as important and having great respect for earthly institutions, you’ll start to see the earth as what it is: a silly, corrupt place where things don’t work the way they should. A planet in a disease state. Not a good place to spend a long time. Not a place you’d want to retire to. The older you get, the closer you are to getting off this wretched rock. If a Muslim beheads you, great. Your sentence is finally over. No more wrinkles. No more joint pains. No more reading glasses. You’ll never get a cold again. You’ll never crack your toe on a piece of furniture. You’ll never worry about where the rent is coming from. Really, you should thank the person who martyrs you.

Christians are basically God’s Peace Corps volunteers, except for one big difference: God’s Peace Corps works, while the world’s Peace Corps tends to send idealistic kids to foreign countries where they find that everyone thinks they’re CIA (because a lot of them are), and the locals expect you do do all the work. Which kind of explains why they need the Peace Corps. You get seven different kinds of bleeding diarrhea, and if you’re lucky, you dig a couple of wells that get filled in by Marxist guerillas the day after you leave. Hooray.

Anyway, God suffers us to remain in this awful place so we can rescue others and bedevil the ruler of this world. God makes things more pleasant and rewarding for us while we’re here, if we really know him and submit to him, but this isn’t what he wants for us in the long term. He can’t wait to bring us home, like soldiers returning from a filthy, bloody war. After all, this IS a war. It’s THE war; all others are imitations.

We return home in boxes, and that’s unfortunate, but it beats staying here.

The older you get, the closer you are to parole, and you’re racking up credits in heaven. You’re filling your retirement account. The Bible makes it clear that what we get in heaven depends on what we do here; we’re not all going to have the same rewards.

You’re also growing to be more like Christ. Your supernatural power–the gifts of the Spirit–is increasing. Your good character–the fruit of the Spirit–is improving. By earth’s standards, you stop growing and start dying when you’re about 20. In God’s kingdom, you haven’t even hit puberty yet. You’re going to get better and better and better.

My life keeps getting better. People jab me about my age, and I don’t care at all. You can have this world. I don’t want it. Get yourself botoxed up and let the good times roll while they may. You’ll still end up in a nursing home, and everyone will think you’re irrelevant, annoying, and superfluous. I have a better destination, and I’ll have a better time during the trip.

No wonder so many martyrs were happy to die. The more they became like God, the more disgusted they must have become with this place. I enjoy life tremendously, but I don’t want to spend the rest of it HERE. Please. When the time comes, please airlift me out of this dump.

You’re not going to see me do any heavy borrowing any time soon. I want my rewards in front of me and my work behind me, not the other way around.