Cooking the Books
I have only been fired from a job once in my life. For two years, I held the position of Director of Finance for my own company. As soon as my wife became aware that our credit score was plummeting, our debt load was climbing, and our retirement was evaporating, she walked me out to the parking lot – I had been fired! Fortunately, I still held other positions within the company for which I was better qualified.
I had taken only one accounting course in college and vaguely remember reference to double entry bookkeeping. As I recall, for the simplest operations, bookkeeping is regulated by The Golden Rule of Accounting: Assets = Liabilities + Equity. Life is a little that way.
If on the right side of my life balance sheet I receive a liability such as the loss of an important relationship, that account receives a credit. Correspondingly, on the left side of my life balance sheet I will have to debit my asset account by improving or developing other important relationships or by drinking more deeply from the memories of the lost relationship. The equity account which is the value of my life remains unchanged. I know, it seems like the debit/credit thing would be the other way around but it isn’t; you can thank the Italians who introduced double entry bookkeeping in 1340 AD for that.
Personal liabilities often bring about personal assets. If I had never known rejection, I would not appreciate being loved; had I not been in bondage to misunderstanding, ignorance, and disillusionment, I would not know the freedom of comprehension, enlightenment, and revelation. No matter how bad a liability appears or feels, “All things work together for good to those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
Accounting practices are known to be playgrounds for malefactors who knowingly provide incorrect information in their financial statements. Recently, a local real estate developer paid the rent for some of the tenants of the shopping center he had for sale. He thereby created the impression that his assets were more valuable than they were. This resulted in a fraud that landed him in a parcel with bars and razor wire.
In a more sensational example of cooking the books, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years for defrauding his investors of over $65 Billion in the biggest fraudulent scheme in U.S. history. So ingenious were the lies, fraudulent accounting, and manipulations, that he and his accomplices committed, the company, for decades, sailed through audits by the Federal IRS and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
I can think of one example of cooking the books that is beneficial. We are all aware that God is infinitely merciful and overflowing with grace, even in the face of egregious sin. Some may not know, however, that He will apply reproof to anyone who perpetrates evil on one of His beloved children. We must never seek revenge or even gloat when we see someone “being taken to the woodshed” on our behalf.
A dilemma arises when we experience pain and alienation because of the reckless behavior and malicious motives of someone we love. We take no pleasure when a loved one falls under God’s reproof and correction even if we are the injured party.
In such a situation, we, who keep short accounts with God and maintain strong owners’ equity in the Grace of Christ, can, not only turn the other cheek to that loved one, but cook the books by appealing to our Heavenly Father to have the slings, arrows, and injuries formed against us applied as credits to the liabilities on the right side of our balance sheets.
It is more than gratifying to see the punishment abate and the debits of reconciliation and forgiveness added to the assets on the left side of our balance sheets
“If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to my account.”
Kent Weathersby
View Comments