Bargaining with God

Steve Cook at Flipping homes (link on the right) had an article about "bargaining with God" in this business. You know how it goes: "Lord, if you just give me a little bit of success I promise I'll give more to the poor/spend more time with my family/build a megachurch in your name. Amen." It's perhaps a very human thing to do, but another very human thing is to take all of those material blessings and wind up in rehab somewhere down the line.

I know exactly what Steve is talking about. I had the same temptation in the beginning, and I was repelled by it. And when I realized that I was basically doing a variation of that, ("Dear God, I'm just trying to take care of my family as a good Christian man should do,") I ended up dropping real estate talk with God altogether. I think it was right around the time I started quoting scripture to the Almighty Author of it. "You know what the Bible says, Lord--the man who doesn't take care of his family is worse than an unbeliever..."

So, yeah, we don't talk about real estate investing, me and God. Heh.

But I realized recently that even that is a form of attempted manipulation of divinity. See, I started praying for everybody under the sun--my cyber buddies at Sophia House, my family, my wife's family, my buddy in Pakistan, the homeless person I saw on the side of the road, our cat, Spaz, who we had to give away...See, by being generous with others, God would have to return the favor somehow. Preferably with a call from a desperate, equity-laden seller who saw my truck's magnetic sign...

Sigh.

It's a tricky thing, being a believer and a would-be businessman. And the last thing I want to be is this guy.