Back in another life I was a salesman, and not a very good one at that. I was trained in techniques designed to close the sale quickly and effectively, and—if necessary—against the customer’s will. During these years I learned people don’t always reveal their true reasons for resisting your pitch. If they complained my product didn’t come in red, it meant they thought the price was too high, or they didn’t trust me. Red was simply a convenient excuse. The real issues were almost always price or trust. Other than the benefit of nearly going bankrupt, my salesman days also taught me something about my walk with God. I discovered that I, too, deal in convenient excuses with the Master of the Universe.
My Convenient Excuses
My convenient excuses are usually big picture things: “The church is full of hypocrites,” I protested. It allowed me to remain in isolation.
When I declared, “The Bible is a flawed book,” it gave me an easy way out of navigating the tension between God’s ways and my ways. I was free to take my pick: “God hates women. Or he’s too violent.” I thought they were convenient excuses, but God wasn’t buying them.
