The Ghost of Jacob Marley

Where I work the term “golden handcuffs” refers to the old Civil Service Retirement System. Management and employee both understood that after 10 or more years of Federal service, an employee was trapped for the rest of his working life. The cost of losing that pension was just too great. Unfortunately I started after the advent of the new FERS system, sometimes referred to as Fools Expecting Retirement Someday. In private industry the term golden handcuffs is used to describe a package of incentives, like stock options, that are timed in such a way as to prevent a key executive from leaving the company.

I would like to expand the meaning of golden handcuffs to the totality of all our decisions, both good and evil, that ultimately form our lives and our legacies in eternity.

In the beginning chapter of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his dead partner, Jacob Marley. Marley has been condemned to wander the earth dragging a heavy chain clasped about his middle, “It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.”

``You are fettered,'' said Scrooge, trembling. ``Tell me why?''

``I wear the chain I forged in life,'' replied the Ghost. ``I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?''

We all make decisions that have nearly irreversible consequences. We get married. We have children. Some of us manage to keep on track moving on with the mission of the Kingdom, making wise decisions on how to use our money and our lives. Some of us take out student loans in pursuit of the good life. Some of us take on mortgages we can ill afford. Some of us strive mightily to keep up with the Jones, buying new SUVs and designer clothing. Link by link and yard by yard we form the chains that bind our lives. One morning we wake up with a dream, to become a missionary, to return to school, to pursue a career in the arts, only to discover we can not follow our dreams because we are chained to the consequences of a lifetime of decisions.

This is one of the reasons I preach against debt. Nothing can better chain you to years of servitude, denying you the freedom to pursue your dreams or your desire to serve God in some particular way. It is the reason I encourage my readers to save and invest. As I have said in previous posts, money equals options.

Of course the other side of that coin can be found not only in the lives of Jacob Marley and his partner, Ebenezer Scrooge, but in First Timothy 6:10 “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, in their eagerness to get rich, have wandered away from the faith and caused themselves a lot of pain.”

Scrooge trembled more and more.

``Or would you know,'' pursued the Ghost, ``the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!''