Opt out

Have you noticed that lately, many things in life, if you are not interested, is something you have to opt out of? It used to be an ‘opt-in’ society where if you wanted something, you needed to say that you were interested in. You either signed up or joined something or had to buy something. My parents actually went to the Ford dealer and custom ordered a truck, from the color, interior, engine and transmission right down to the guages in the dash. Anything they wanted was an ‘opt-in’ and order situation.

The other day, I was looking at my electronic subscriptions from streaming services to security settings and noticed that I have to actually ‘opt-out’ of certain options. And my new company car has something called ‘auto-off’ when the car stops at an intersection. This insipid little feature is supposed to save our planet by automaticlly turning off the engine when it stops at a light then automaticlly starts again when you depress the accelerator. This device is always on, and if you don’t want it, you must turn it off everytime to start the engine. Basically, it is an ‘opt-out’ feature instead of an ‘opt-in’ feature. It can not be deacticated but the only way to deactivate it, is to press the button everytime you start the engine. I can’t imagine too many people would choose a car with this feature. Maybe a few, but not many. Shouldn’t this engine killing feature be something that you order? Earlier in the car making business, seat belts, windshield wipers and even cruise control were options that were extra but could be added ‘if you wanted them’. But so many people actually wanted those options, and they were found to save lives that now, they are standard features in cars now. But who would actually pay extra for a feature that allows the cars computer to turn off you car just to save about 10 gallons of gas a year (actual mileage may vary).

Opt-in or opt-out; that is the differance between freedom and being controlled. Think about it, someone in gov’t actually thought that no one will want it, but we will make them have it anyway. Online security, banking options, car features and even EV choices have all become ‘opt-out’. Have you become acustom to the ‘opt-out’ mentality that you think it is normal? Or do you crave freedom and being asked if you ‘want’ something, or do you want to be told what to do and what someone else

thinks is good for you? Information is true power, empower yourself.

In Jr High School, I had a teacher that made part of our homework keeping a journal in cursive every night. It didn’t matter what we chose to write about, it was just a habit he wanted us to create but do it in cursive. For those of you not old enough, cursive is hand writting. Believe it or not, it is in english. Up until just shy of the Covid fiasco, I kept a journal, infrequently but still. I still kept the habit of hand writting about a third of my entries as I also got into the habit of writting, or printing, everything in uppercase english from when I was a security guard and all of our reports had to be in medium black or blue ink, legible and in upper case letters for clear reports. This year, my mother bought me a bible devotional, one with lined margins for ideas and thoughts. (My bible looks like a chicken walked around the margins with thoughts and ideas of the scripture that I read so lined margins work great for me). Some days I only write a couple of words and others I nearly fill the lined areas.  Here it is early March and I am a couple of days behind, 4 days to be exact (in case my mom is reading this). I stopped on one devotional verse that stopped me in my tracks. In Matthew, after Christ had been crucified and Peter had denied Christ 3 times, Jesus appears to the deciples and asks Peter “Do you love me?”

I stopped. Those 4 words cut deep (have you ever been cut with a very sharp knife? You don’t immediately feel the cut or realize the depth). A simple question but with a complicated answer. My first inclination was to obviously say “yes”, but a person needs to evaluate there answer. You know what will come next. If you answer Christ with a “yes”, he will then ask “then why haven’t you followed my commandments? In an earlier devotional, it read that shame was a gift. This was one devotional that I claimed to be BS! I don’t consider shame to be a blessing. Shame seperates us. You realize what you have done. You look like the dog who did a doodle inside and the master came home and found that doodle. You want to hide your face. You want to crawl under a rock.

When I was a kid, my parents took my sister and I to Marineland, one of my favorite places. We were watching the Killer Whale show and a guy from the audience started to talk back against the MC, a guy that worked with the Killer Whale and was one of the trainers. This verbal confrontation continued for a couple of minutes when a woman also in the audience stood up and cussed the other guy out telling him to shut up and sit down. Well, as it turned out, the first guy was part of the show and when he finally got hold of the microphone, he said that she must want to crawl under a rock. Her face was several shades of red and gray with shame. 

Well, when I read that question, I felt as she must have felt. I saw Christ himself looking at me and asking “Do you love me?” What must have been going thru Peters mind when Christ, himself, looked past Peters eyes and into his soul when he asked Peter that question, not once, not twice but three times. Christ was trying to rebuild Peter as he must have felt alot of shame. But shame is not a gift nor a blessing. It can create a seperation. How do you handle shame? How would you answer Christ as he asks you “Do you love me?”