Why I Bought a Fake Bo Jackson Card
The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps. -Proverbs 14:15
I had $20 and an insatiable quest to fill my collection of Bo Jackson baseball cards. There was one card that I was on the lookout for, but it was worth more than I had in my wallet. A 1986 Memphis Chicks card. Today you can sell that card in mint condition for $1500. I was hoping to get one with dog-eared corners for $20 and a trade.
I found one.
And it was in beautiful condition. I traded a Frank Thomas rookie card (worth about $5) and my Andrew Jackson ($20). But I got a steal. I knew this card was worth more than the $25. To me it was priceless.
When I got it home, I looked it up in my trusty baseball card pricing guide. Much to my horror, I discovered that the actual card has a brownish border around it. How could I have been so foolish?!?!? This was a knockoff card. Same picture as the card I wanted, but not the actual card.
I was too young and simple to realize that a baseball card dealer might be dishonest. With age I’d learn that if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. But I was only about ten or eleven at the time. And who rips off a 10-year-old kid?
One purpose of Proverbs is to educate the simple. The whole book is really an invitation to wisdom. To the wise, its to gain even more insight. To the simple, its to actually acquire wisdom. To move away from being a simpleton who believes you can get a valuable baseball card for 1/5 of it’s worth.
Why did I fall for it?
Simple. I wanted it to be true.
The reality was that I, a ten-year-old child without any source of income except birthday money from grandma, didn’t have the economic means to acquire what I wanted. That Bo Jackson card was out of my reach. But ten-year-olds like to dream. It wasn’t out of the reach of my active imagination.
This proverb isn’t written merely to young boys, though. Adults can be just as simple as children. We still believe lies because we want them to be true. And we believe lies because they shield us from a reality we don’t want to face. When discussing our propensity to bury our head in the sand when it comes to things like abuse within the church, Diane Langberg says this:
“Instead of facing truth, they discredit and ignore. Why? Because acknowledging the truth will completely disrupt the system…We don’t want to see because it threatens our belief in the virtue of our leaders and the worth of the system…We would rather believe a reassuring lie than an utterly inconvenient and disturbing truth.”[1]
This is what gives legs to many of our conspiracy theories. We believe everything our tribe feeds us. If it’s a good lie about how awesome we are or a great lie about how horrible they are, the simple will always swallow it. But the prudent, this proverb tells us, will give thought to his steps. In other words, the prudent will analyze every claim.
Had I been prudent as a ten-year-old I might have taken a price guide with me. I’d have compared it to other similar cards. Perhaps even brought in a second opinion on whether or not this card was the great deal I thought it was. That would have been giving thought to my steps.
Likewise, as adults we don’t believe every claim we read. Actually, that’s not the best way to phrase that sentence. It might be better to say, “As adults we don’t believe any claim without giving thought to our steps.” I think that’s the better way of saying that because we tend to nod our head to “don’t believe every claim we read” and put the writing of the “other side” or the “dangerous” people in that category. And yet we tend to give a free pass to those we deem “solid” or “trustworthy”. The prudent will check the work. Always.
[1] Quoted from: https://aimeebyrd.com/2020/10/27/redeeming-power-understanding-authority-and-abuse-in-the-church/
Sadly, that’s not the card I own.