Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

By justice a king gives a country stability, but those who are greedy for bribes tear it down.

• Proverbs 29:4

A bribe is seen as a charm by the one who gives it; they think success will come at every turn.

• Proverbs 17:8

“Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent.

• Exodus 23:8

Jehoshaphat lived in Jerusalem, and he went out again among the people from Beersheba to the hill country of Ephraim and turned them back to the Lord, the God of their ancestors. He appointed judges in the land, in each of the fortified cities of Judah. He told them, “Consider carefully what you do, because you are not judging for mere mortals but for the Lord, who is with you whenever you give a verdict. Now let the fear of the Lord be on you. Judge carefully, for with the Lord our God there is no injustice or partiality or bribery.”

• 2 Chronicles 19:4-7

Boilerplate

I’m Harold Dykstra.  I’m retired, but I go to food bank distributions all over Tracy and talk to people that need someone who will listen to their story.  My time is well spent.  A police lieutenant suggested that I write down the conversations that I had with an angel.  I did not know she was an angel at the time.  The angel, for a little over a year, indwelled a life-sized posable action figure my children bought me, so that I would not be perceived as travelling alone.  And in a way, she was training me for what I do while talking to the needy.  She probed my heart to find out what I believed and how I express love for others.  She changed my life.  Oh, excuse me, angels have no gender, but the angel indwelled a doll named Bountiful Babs.  After seeing the angel in that form for over a year, I cannot see her in my mind in any other form.

This Week’s Question

In the last episode, Babs went with me to a sales call, but stayed in the car when I was at the mill.  On the way there, she asked all kinds of questions about greed.  We may come back to that.  We hardly scratched the surface, but then she linked greed with bribery, and I promised her we would talk about that on the way back to the hotel.

As soon as I got back to the car, she asked, “Harold, have you ever accepted a bribe?”

“No.”

“Have you ever given a bribe?”

“No.”

“Has your company ever bribed anyone?”

“The company has a policy that we do not give bribes or accept them.”

“That does not answer the question.”

“Babs, I tell you what.  If you hold all further questions until we get to a nice restaurant in this town, I will treat you to surf and turf.”

Babs scrunched her nose.  “I don’t know.  That sounds like a bribe if you ask me.”

I sighed, “Until we get to the restaurant, you can ask me your usual questions, like ‘How did the sales call go, Harold?”

Babs growled.  I think she still thought the surf and turf offer was a bribe.  “Okay, how did the sales call go, Harold?  Did I ask the question right?  Hmmmm?”

I smiled, “A masterful job, and we will be spending the weekend at our present hotel.  They want me to bring the company president back with me next Monday, another ten-million-dollar project if we can land it.”

Babs laughed, “You will land it.  Remember, I promised you four of those this year.”

I nodded, “And I did not believe a word of it since I had never had a sale for more than about a million.  I’m a spare parts salesman.  In fact, it would be the capital projects sales manager next Monday, but he has the flu.  Imagine that?”

Babs giggled, “Yeah, imagine that.  You were in the right place at the right time, and the guy that should be coming here has the flu.  Who’d a’ thunk?”

I asked, “You are always proper.  Why did you not say, ‘Who would have thought?’  Where’d you get that phrase?”

Babs shrugged, “A funny guy at the breakfast area this morning.  He had half the room laughing.  You, as usual, were in the kitchen trying to fix the hotel’s pancake maker.”

I coughed, “Trying and succeeding!  I have skills.”

Babs cleared her throat.  “Yeah, and you miss the action, when there is any, in the breakfast area.”

I pulled into the restaurant parking lot.  We got a corner booth, dimly lit, and I ordered without looking at the menu.  I had been there before.

Babs cringed, “Harold, these people are going to think we are up to something, and all I want to be up to is you being honest about bribery within your company, and a nice Bible study lesson.”

I smiled, “Babs, this is a classy restaurant, but the clientele might be the kind of people that might offer a bribe.  If we talk too loud, we might find ourselves buried in an unmarked grave.”

Babs gasped, “Are you serious?!”

I laughed, “No, Babs, but I wanted our meal to be private.  Just the two of us.  Whether we get this big sale next Monday or not, I have already gotten my quota of sales and I have a nice bonus coming my way.  Besides, when you talk about bribes in a restaurant, even a Bible study about them, people give you a dirty look.”

Babs blushed, “People never give me a dirty look, but you on the other hand…”

I snickered, “Was that you trying to tell a joke?  I am impressed.”

Babs laughed, “Okay, now to the question you never answered.  Has your company ever bribed anyone?”

I nodded, “About twenty years ago.  There are many countries in this world where you cannot even bid to do work unless you have gone through several levels of bribes.  You also have to have a bribe negotiator.  He does not negotiate the amount of the bribe, but he has the country royal family on speed dial, or he claims that he does.  You first pay him a lot of money to meet mister nobody in the company.  Mind you, when the other salesman who did all this bribing was working on this multi-million dollar sale, our company had more experience and expertise in completing that kind of project than anyone else in the world.  It was all down to the bribes.”

Babs asked, “What happened when you met mister nobody?”

I corrected her, “I never met the negotiator or Mr. Nobody, but the other salesman bribed him.  That gave him enough reasons to ask his boss if he would talk to our salesman.  We had to bribe the boss twice what we bribed Mr. Nobody.  Then we went to his boss’ boss, but he was out of town.  That meant leaving the country and flying back home for a couple of months.  Guess what?”

Babs spluttered, “I have no idea?  You went back and found Mr. Nobody’s boss’ boss out of town again?”

I shook my head, “No, Mr. Nobody had changed jobs and we had to find a new Mr. Nobody and start at the beginning.  By now, we, as a company, had spent over a half million dollars, and we were two levels below the royal person that was the only one who could sign the paperwork to let us bid on the job.  The negotiator said we needed to hire someone who would do nothing but wait for the next person to bribe.”

Babs asked, “Did you ever meet this prince or princess?”

I shook my head.  “Nope, as the bidding closing date approached, we were at the level just below royalty and the bribe price became equal to the profit that we might get on the job.  There were more jobs, and we could have made money on the second or third job, but our management went back to the by-laws, and we cut our losses.  And we lost more than a million dollars without having an audience with the prince.”

Babs then asked, “So, to tie this into a Bible study, Proverbs 29:4 means that the king makes a lot of money, but the people that do the real work suffer.  They don’t get the best equipment or the best tools.  All the money went into the bribes and the most qualified people never got to propose something better?”

I nodded, “That’s one way to look at it.  And Proverbs 17:8 means that our company dangled charms in front of greedy people but Exodus 23:8 says that those who accept bribes become blind.  They got what they wanted, and they give the project, in this example, to the one who gave them the money, whether they were the best for the job is another subject.”

Babs frowned, “But what about government officials?”

“In what country?” I asked.

“Well, if this is a Bible study, you might have to talk about ancient Israel or Judah, but in this country too.” Babs smiled, “I am not being greedy.  We talked about that this morning, I am just eager to learn.”  She then batted her eyelashes to emphasize her ‘innocence.’

I snickered.  “Okay, what about King Jehoshaphat?  Is that ancient enough for you?”

“Jumping Jehoshaphat!  All the way back to him?!” Babs exclaimed.

I whispered, “Babs, they do have an open mike for comedy acts here on Saturday night.  Are you auditioning?”

She giggled, “No, what about old king Jehoshaphat?”

I said, “In 2 Chronicles 19:4-7 he talks about how judges must be people who administer justice, and they should not take bribes.  Like the Proverbs 29 Scripture, hard to have justice when the decision is made by the person with the most money.  But that often happens these days.  It is not a matter of who bribes what official, but the person with enough money to get the celebrity lawyer that impresses the jury can get the jury to decide in their favor.  As for law makers, they are forbidden to talk to special interest groups, but they do.  They are supposed to work through lobbyists to prevent bribes, but bribes still happen and law makers have been tried as law breakers.  This country does not like bribery, but it still happens.  It’s like everything else that we have studied in the Bible, it comes down to the sin nature of mankind.”

Babs sighed, “And I guess that ends our little Bible study.  Our lobster tails and steaks are coming.  Can you afford this meal on your expense report?”

I nodded, “Sure, but I might have to bribe the accountant.”

She looked me in the eye for a few seconds, and then we both laughed.  Really, if the weekly average was low enough, I was okay.

After the meal, Babs asked, “Okay, Harold, you bribed me with this great meal.  What do I have to do to pay for it?”

I sighed, “Babs, you already paid for it.  I said you would get the meal if you held your questions about bribery until we got here.”

She snickered, “Oh, I forgot!  So, now that my debt is paid.  What’s for dessert?”

Credits

All these conversations remind me of my conversations with my wife.  We would talk about anything and everything.  And most of the time, it sounded like a discussion in a Sunday school class.

Unlike my wife, Babs and Harold had dessert.  The last time my wife had dessert at a restaurant was when we had only been married about six years, about 42 years ago.  I remember it well, bananas foster, flambéed at our table, in Austin, Texas.

“Jumping Jehoshaphat” is one of the Christian Cusswords in Tim Hawkins comedy routine of the same name.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.