Do you check expiration dates?

It is my normal mode of operation to use these “Question of the Month” articles to explore various interesting topics in a fairly simple manner, while making an important “larger point”. This month will only be a slight, temporary diversion from the norm, taking somewhat of a break and providing some comical relief.

I recently received an interesting package in the mail from John P., one of the ministry’s supporters. It was a bulky envelope which piqued my curiosity. Upon opening the package, I discovered a salt shaker and a brief note stating the following:

“I hope you find this as humorous as I did. Perhaps I was just in a good mood. I was at a friend’s home and found this salt shaker on the table. Being a fanatical label reader, I picked it up and began reading. The label states that this salt is ‘250 million years old’. Not surprising, but then I read the label on the bottom and it said, ‘BEST BY 12 2023’. I’m glad I can use it up before it expires!”

Very funny!

Sometimes we walk into a store, and it just happens to be the last day of a week-long sales event. How lucky we may feel!

In the case of the salt, what a fortunate coincidence to have happened upon this very valuable, multi-purpose substance within the last 0.0000024% of its useful “shelf-life”! (Side note: Where did I come up with that figure? I divided the remaining years [6] by its current age [250 million years]). The obvious question is– if the salt is truly about 250 million years old, how do they know it’s just now soon to expire? And a closely related question– since the 250 million years is just an approximation, how can they be so precise with the “Best by” date?

As an added note of interest, the reason the label even mentioned the alleged age of the “Himalayan” salt was to make the point that this salt was created at a time when the Earth’s eco-environment was much more pure and pristine which, therefore makes their product more valuable than salts produced in more modern times.

Those of you who know me (and the ministry) realize I personally don’t believe the millions and billions of years designations are scientifically justified, but it is not my intention to turn this into a discussion of radiometric dating methods and the whole “age of the Earth” controversy. I simply wanted to pass along something of a humorous nature. I’m also not the kind to contact the company that produced this product to challenge them regarding their claim. Most likely, they are not experts in geology and simply had a clever marketer develop this label as an effective way to increase their bottom line. If you look carefully enough and often enough, you will find quite a few of these types of examples throughout the retail world.

How’s that for a brief article? I partially wanted to provide a slightly less serious “change of pace”, but maybe even more so, I was just too busy (with Christmas coming up in a few weeks) to write anything significantly more in depth or lengthy. (How’s that for transparency?)

What on Earth are you Doing?

Imagine for a moment, you are employed by some company as a salesperson and 95% of your responsibilities involve contacting customers. What do you think would happen if you only spent 75% of your time making sales calls? How about if it was only 50%? What about 20%? You probably wouldn’t be employed much longer and with good reason. No one would expect their boss to be happy with them in any of these situations.

How can they not see it?

We’ve all been in conversations with people where we are astonished how they “just don’t get it”. It can be very frustrating and exhausting. This holds true for all sorts of situations, but we are going to restrict ourselves to the area of dealing with skeptics when it comes to discussing the Christian worldview.

Genesis… too dangerous to study?

You’ve probably never thought about studying the Bible as being dangerous, but in some respects, it can be. As with most of my articles, I will be raising a larger issue and alerting you to something you may not have thought of before.

Should you challenge your teacher or professor?

Last month (in Part 1 of this question), I began to address how to approach a teacher or professor who is sharing views that are directly contradictory to what we learn from God’s Word. However, I was not able to cover as much as I would have liked to, so in Part 2, we will continue the discussion.

Should you challenge your teacher or professor?

Much of our educational experience consists of sitting in a classroom, listening to details about a particular subject, and regurgitating those specifics on an exam so we can eventually get a job at which point we feel “real life’ begins.

A condensed version of the Bible?

When I was in school (kindergarten through college) I absolutely hated reading. I think it was partially because I was such a slow reader and it would take me much longer than others to read just about anything. In fact, when I was in grade school, my mom would often read my assignments to me.