Boycott Chase!

Chase Bank doesn't get it!

The whole point of the recent congressional hearings on credit card abuse, together with the subsequently enacted rules changes, is that consumers are sick and tired of being manipulated and abused by the banks who have all the power in the credit card game.

But Chase just doesn't get it.

Earlier this week, I got this "Important Notice Regarding Changes to Your Account".  It read, in part.

"Your minimum payment due will increase from 2% to 5% of the ending balance on your monthly statement..."

Whaaaattt?   I owe over $13, 000 on that card.  That means my minimum monthly payment is going to jump from somewhere around $260 a month to $650 a month!  For no reason at all! just because they can!

In the past, whenever there has been a change to account terms, it seems like there's been a paragraph that says something like "If you do not want to accept these terms..." and basically says you can close your account and continue to pay off your balance under the existing terms.  Not this time. Uh-uh.  We're going to do it to you, and you have no choice but to take it.

I even called customer service and told them that those terms were not acceptable and I wanted to close the account and continue to pay it off under the existing terms.  He said, "I'm sorry, you do not have that option."

I asked, "How can you unilaterally change my repayment terms?"  And he replied, basically, we can to any thing we want.  This is a direct quote: "We can demand payment of 100% of the balance in the next 30 days if we choose to." The arrogance!

I'm obviously not a lawyer, and I probably haven't kept the 15 pages of fine print "terms and conditions" that they sent me when I opened the account, so I can't really say whether they legally have that right or not.  I'm going to assume that, being a big corporation with lots of high-powered lawyers, if they say they do, then they probably do. (At least under current law. Maybe that needs change.)

But whether they legally have that right or not, to exercise it in the cavalier manner they have chosen to, with total disregard for their customers,  is absolutely unconscionable.

Understand, I'm not a deadbeat.  I've occasionally run up more debt than I should, but I have always paid it off. Aside from maybe 1 or 2 statements that have gotten lost on a messy desk, I don't think I've missed a payment on any of my credit cards in the 30 years I've been using them.

I had cancer a few years ago.  During that time, I was unable to work, and my (then) wife was taking care of me, so she couldn't work.  For some period of time, we lived on the generosity of friends and, mostly, credit card advances. We ran up a very substantial credit card debt.  But even when the payments were consuming well over half of my limited disability income, I never missed a payment.   And I have completely paid off 4 of the credit cards, with only 2 to go (both of them being Chase cards).  So they had no reason to single me out for this action.

Chase (well, actually Washington Mutual, which has been acquired by Chase) has been my preferred bank for quite some time.  But I refuse to do business with a company that shows such complete disdain for the rights of its customers.  I will be moving every account I have with Chase to another bank as soon as I conveniently can, and I would call on all my readers (both of you! LOL) to do the same.

I would also call on Congress to look into further curbs on the power of big banks.  It appears that arbitrarily raising minimum payments was not one of the powers that was limited in the recent reforms.  We were warned in the press that if Congress took away the powers that banks had to stick us with punitive interest rates and fees, the banks would find other ways to stick it to us, and it appears that they have.  Congress, we need to change that, too.

This I believe, pt 2 - There is a god

Note that I used a lower case 'g' on that title. At this stage of my apologetic, it can't be said that I'm necessarily talking about the Jehovah, the God of the Bible.

But, in my thinking, the fact that there is a supreme being of unimaginable power and intelligence is abundantly clear from the world around us. The only ones who can possibly deny that are those who have taken as a presupposition that there is no god.

Let me clarify what I mean by that. In any kind of logical reasoning, you start from some point, with some set of "givens", and construct your argument from the implications of those givens. They may be called axioms, or assumptions, or presuppositions. But within that sphere of logical reasoning, nothing can be permitted to contradict those givens.

One of the arguments heard in the evolution debate is that Christians accept God on "faith", the implication being that faith somehow contradicts reason. But the evolutionists have "faith", too - faith in their assumption that there is no god. And I conclude that it takes a great deal more "faith" in that assumption to reach the evolutionary world view than it does to accept the position that there is a god, and he created the world we live in.

I am NOT saying that one needs to start with the assumption that there is a god. One merely needs to eliminate the assumption that there is NOT a god. If you have that assumption, then you must bend and twist and look at the evidence from all manner of cock-eyed angles in order to avoid the conclusion that there is a god, because that contradicts your assumption. If you eliminate that assumption, than you are free to look at the evidence straight on, and my conclusion is that the evidence overwhelmingly points to the existence of a creator-god.

I remember some years ago hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, and looking up in awe at the majestic rock formations towering hundreds of feet above me, and thinking, "And this was merely an afterthought of God's creative efforts." Okay, you can argue that that's merely the force of nature at work. But there are other arguments that suggest it is more than that.

I remember hearing one time (sorry, I can't remember the source) a man pick up a shoe, and saying "This shoe proves the existence of God."
And his listener replied "How?"
The man replied "Who made the shoe?"
"The cobbler."
"And who made the raw materials that the cobbler used to make the shoe."
"The cow."
"And what did the cow eat go grow?"
"Grass"
"And who made the grass?"

and so on, and so on. Eventually you get back to the "prime mover", the "first cause", something or someone made it all happen. Even if you subscribe to the "big bang" theory, where did this energy and matter that went into the "big bang" come from? Now the evolutionists at that point will say "Now you're getting out of the realm of science and into the realm of religion, and we can't answer that question." Well, duh, that's the point. You can't answer that question without violating your assumption that we there is no god, and that therefore we live in a closed universe free from anything that has to do with the supernatural.

But the thing that they miss is that the entire discussion is outside the realm of science. Evolution is not science. Science deals with the observable, the reproducible, the testable. You observe facts, you propound theories, you construct experiments to test your theories, and others can reproduce your work to verify it. Evolution does none of those. It cannot observe the origin of life, it cannot reproduce it, it cannot conduct experiments to test its theories. And just because 90%, or whatever the percentage is, of people accept a theory, does not mean that it is not still a theory.

So I believe that nature shows us that god exists, and that he is being of unimaginable power and grandeur.

But I believe nature also shows us that he is a being of supreme intelligence. I cannot understand the huge brouhaha over "Intelligent Design". It appears to me so obvious. If you're hiking in a desolate area, and you come upon, let's say, a watch, you don't pick it up and say, "My look at how these elements randomly assembled themselves into this watch." No, of course not. You conclude that someone was there before you and dropped the watch, because it's obvious that it was designed by an intelligence. [I know this is the age-old watchmaker analogy which has been "refuted", but all the "refutations" that I can find simply say, "no, natural selection can explain that design." Well, in my mind, it's a matter of which explanation makes more sense. Again, the natural selection argument is viable only if you start from a position that absolutely denies the possibility a god.] Nature in general, and the human body in particular, is of unimaginably complex design. To believe that it came about by mutations or other transformations happening randomly is beyond ludicrous. I remember someone once saying that's about as likely as an explosion in a type-setting factory producing the Encyclopedia Brittannica (obviously from a far earlier time when we still had encyclopedias!).

There is far more within the sphere of "Intelligent Design" than I want to go into here that, to my mind, clearly demonstrates that, not only is the god I believe in a god of supreme power, but also one of incredible intelligence.

And thus, I believe that god exists.

This I believe, pt 1

A friend posted the video below to his facebook page a week or so ago, with the comment "PLEASE TAKE TIME TO WATCH THIS VIDEO! I HOPE IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE LIKE IT HAS CHANGED MINE RECENTLY!!!!" (thanks, Josh).

I found it compelling and yet disturbing. There is much that he says that I'm in full agreement with. And it's hard to say that there are things he says that I disagree with, because everything he says comes from scripture, and he's not misquoting it or misinterpreting it. And yet I find I strongly disagree with the overall message that seems to be coming through. Maybe it's what he doesn't say that I disagree with.

Watch these videos (it was posted a few days ago on YouTube in two parts, and that's the easiest for me to incorporate), and then read my thoughts below.

The Fire Part 01

The Fire Part 02

What he seems to be saying without saying it, is stop sinning so much and you won't go to hell. Nowhere does he ever talk about trusting in Christ for salvation, about being saved by God's grace, "not of works". And the monstrous problem with his message is, how do you ever know if you've stopped sinning "enough," if you've loved God "enough", if you've brought forth "enough" fruit? How can you be assured of salvation?

I heartily agree with his contention that we value the forgiveness of God far too cheaply. I agree that if we are truly saved, there will be fruit in our lives. But he seems to be saying that it's up to us to produce that fruit. He almost seems to be saying that anything less than sinless perfection means that you hate God and are going to hell.

I am a believer in Jesus Christ. I don't want to compare myself to others, but I think I take more seriously the claims of Christ and expend more effort in seeking to know him than most Christians I know. But I sin. I probably sin in areas I don't even recognize as sin. The Jews were commanded "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might". I know I don't do that perfectly, and not doing that perfectly is sin.

What this guy (Nate Pfeil, by the way) is saying strikes me as very much at odds with what I, as a lifelong "Evangelical" Christian, have been taught - that our salvation is dependent solely on our trust in the completed work of Christ, and, while it is our responsibility to surrender to God's work in our lives, it is the work of God through the Holy Spirit to bring forth the fruit in our lives.

And yet, as I said, his points are scriptural. So have I been led down the primrose path by, in his words "lying preachers, wolves in sheep's clothing?" As he says, his message is serious. The consequences of getting it wrong are too high. So it's prompting me to want to step back, re-examine and re-think what I believe and the basis for it. And I'm thinking, let's go ALL the way back, to "There is a god (and I'm not him!)". So I think that's what I'm going to do, and doing it in these pages will force me, I hope, to clarify my thoughts and the reasons behind them.

Stay tuned.