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| Does B S stand for Best Skin, or Bull Shit |
It is a "B S Genuine Leather" wallet!
I was enjoying my
simple lunch when a man in his mid-60s, nicknamed by his friends as
"Flintstone", sat down opposite me and looked glum. "What
ails you, Sir?" I asked. He pulled out his wallet, and before he could tell
his story, I joked, "Thanks, I can do with RM50." Then he told me his
story. He was presented with a nice gift at a company function some months
back; it was a posh-looking wallet in an impressive gift box. He was so
delighted with that company gift, and he thought it was a "best skin
genuine leather" wallet.
Last week he lost
his old wallet - all gone, a few hundred ringgits, license, cards, etc. He
looked morose when he said that. I would too if I were in his shoes, having to
go through the hassles of getting the replacement. The only consolation in the
situation was that he remembered the posh wallet. So he started using that new
wallet last week, with some sense of pride, a little relief in the whole
ordeal.
But to his dismay, the 'genuine leather' wallet started forming
"blisters" on the third day of usage. Then the "blisters"
were bursting and the leather was shedding its skin. To prove his point, he
peeled a whole lot more of it right before my eyes.
"That's
unusual; let me take a look, Sir," said I, and he passed it to me. I took
a close look and read out the label, B S GENUINE LEATHER. "Hmm, do you
know what B S stands for? "Best Skin, I thought," said he. "I'm
afraid the wallet doesn't show that it is made from 'best skin genuine
leather," I whispered.
"Then what could it possibly mean?", he
sounded flabbergasted. I said in the most tender tone I could muster,
"Maybe it means B S as in cow dung. How could it be anything else, seeing
what has happened to your wallet?"
You should see his reaction when he
understood! Precious. He thanked me for calling a spade a spade. (I did offer
him my wallet but told him that he wouldn't like it since mine is just a
card-sized plastic box of half-inch thick.)
The encounter makes
me think; so much of what goes around as the gospel of grace is like that
"B S Genuine Leather" wallet - impressively packaged in biblical-sounding words. But if you scratch and poke it a bit, then the thin glossy
veneer of bible-sounding words will start peeling off and bare its cheapskate counterfeits.
There is even this
serious saying, "scratch a Calvinist hard enough and you will discover an
Arminian." My experiences confirm that saying many times over.
1Jo 4:1
Beloved, believe not
every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false
prophets are gone out into the world.
