By Creg
Let’s say you decide to
sell hotdogs at the big football game. How much do you charge? You
would obviously have to take into account how much it costs you to
buy, prepare & set up the food. Let’s say your costs are $1 per
hotdog. If you sold them for just $2 you would probably sell a lot,
but what if you knew that some people would gladly pay $4 if they
were really hungry? Selling them for $4 would make you more money
per hotdog, but sell less of them.
What should you do?
If you could
tell that the first person walking by wasn’t very hungry you could
charge him just $2 and probably make a sale. If you knew that the
second person who walked by was really hungry and loved hotdogs, you
could charge him $4 and still probably make a sale.
Why don’t you
just put up a sign that says:
Hotdog for the really hungry $4.
Hotdog
for the not-so-hungry $2.
Do you think that would catch on? You might have
to be more subtle. How about adding 25 cents worth of condiments for this
price list:
Hotdog-plain $2.
Hotdog-cheese, relish, onions, mustard $4.
Then you can find out, in a sly way, if the customers are willing
to pay more.
IBM did something
similar with printers. They made the “LaserWriter E” and to give
those customers who are willing to pay more a chance to show
themselves, IBM put an additional chip in some printers to slow them
down so they could charge more for the “fast” printers! So, IBM
mass-produced a single printer, put a “slow-down” chip in half
of them and sold them at two prices.
Intel, the chip
manufacturer, played a similar game by selling two processing chips
at different prices. In this case the inferior chip was actually more
expensive to produce because it was made by taking the superior chip
and disabling one of its features. (The preceding information about IBM & Intel was taken from the book "The Undercover Economist" by Tim Harford)
I think that is how
Satan works.
He has to be subtle
in finding out who will pay more. He disables a feature on something that God has blessed you with and tries to get you to
“upgrade” to his model.
For example, look
at this picture. What do you see?
Did you see
black spots or a lot of white?
Pretend that is
your spouse. Satan tries to get you to focus on the few black spots
(ex. they are late sometimes, they don’t put things back where they go,
they don’t talk enough, they talk too much…) instead of focusing on all of the
pure white space that God has blessed you with in your marriage: like
a dependable partner, a lifelong friend, good conversations, a common love for the Lord…
Satan tries to get you to pay more for "something better" by getting you to focus on the black spots and by showing you an alternative that he tries to present as "superior" by adding a few wrinkles (or more likely by taking away a few wrinkles). Like someone who could be a prettier, younger, more personable spouse who appreciates you more.
Let’s say the
picture is your church and the black spots might be: a boring sermon,
a member you disagree with, a different opinion about
worship…Yet you should be focusing on the good relationships, the
servant hearts, and how you can work together to bring Jesus to the
lost.
So, my prayer is
that we see these temptations for what they are and not let Satan
disable things that God has blessed us with to enrich our lives.
P.S. I really love my wife!
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