Sometimes the most profound spiritual truths arrive in the most mundane settings. A car dealership taught me more about the devil’s tactics than a dozen sermons ever could. The schemes are ancient. The battlefield is everyday life.
I didn’t walk into the car dealership looking for a spiritual lesson. I just came in for a fair deal and a hassle-free experience.
But some experiences in life teach us far more about spiritual matters than they do about earthly ones.
The Twenty-Dollar Lie
The first time I went to a car dealer was back in the late ’80s. I saw a newspaper ad for lightly used cars at a dealer across town.
I drove over, test-drove one, and told the salesman I’d buy it.
That’s when he invited me back to his desk, and the games began.
The paper showed the advertised price of $6,995—plus tax, title, license, and several mysterious other charges.
One was called a “destination charge.” I asked what that was.
“Oh, that’s the price the dealer pays to have a car delivered to them,” he said. “Everybody pays that.”
He said it like he was educating a car-buying bumpkin.
“Your ad listed the price plus tax, title, and license,” I said. “No other charges.”
He went to “see what he could do for me,” then came back with news that the sales manager had gone to lunch.
If I was serious, I’d need to put down some earnest money so the car wasn’t sold to someone else while we worked out the details. So I foolishly handed him a twenty-dollar bill.
Phone calls over the next few days proved pointless as he kept coming up with more dubious charges. Exasperated, I drove back to get my deposit.
My salesman went upstairs and came back with news that the cashier had gone to dinner. I’d need to come back another time.
I didn’t believe the salesman, and the lie infuriated me.
I’m far from a violent person—really just the opposite—but at that moment I envisioned walking through the dealership with a baseball bat and shattering every one of their glistening glass showroom walls.
Mad as I was, I walked out and never returned, giving up on the twenty dollars and the diapers and baby food it would’ve bought.
Wearing You Down
It would be more than twenty years before I entered another car dealership.
This time I called ahead. The salesman assured me the advertised car was available and that the listed price was the full cost, so I made an appointment.
When I arrived, a receptionist offered me coffee and said my salesman would be with me shortly—he was in a meeting with the sales manager.
Thirty-five minutes later, he finally appeared, all smiles, sunshine, and handshakes. He apologized and said he was ready to show me the car—but first he needed to run a set of keys down to the service department.
“Just five minutes.”
He disappeared.
When he eventually returned, he seemed to have forgotten which car I’d come to see. I reminded him. He nodded and said he just needed to grab the keys so I could test-drive it.
Then he was gone again.
After another long delay, he came back with news: the car wasn’t on the lot. It was on one of their auxiliary lots about a mile away. Someone was bringing it over. “Should only take fifteen minutes.”
Nearly two and a half hours after my appointment time, during another of the salesman’s disappearances, I walked out—having never once laid eyes on the car.
I got in my car and headed for the freeway. I had only driven a mile or two when the salesman called. Miraculously, the car had arrived. The paperwork was ready. All I needed to do was sign.
“I wouldn’t believe you,” I told him, “if you said the sun was coming up tomorrow.”
I recalled a line I’d heard Scotty say on Star Trek: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
When I got home, I researched car dealer tactics and discovered the number one scheme: make the customer wait.
Drag out the experience all day and wear them down so they’ll sign anything.
It’s hard to fault buyers for falling into these traps—dealers have decades of experience, while most people shop for cars about as often as they shop for knee and hip replacements.
Recalling that experience over the years, I began sharing my story with my economics classes. Not all car dealers are hucksters, but the schemes are common enough in life that people need to know how to protect themselves.
The Devil’s Stock-in-Trade
Years later, it struck me: these aren’t just business tactics.
Every scheme I encountered—the deception, the pressure, the exploitation of inexperience—these are the devil’s stock-in-trade.
They’ve been used against humanity since the Garden of Eden. The devil takes advantage of our lack of knowledge, our naivety, our vulnerabilities, and our fears.
In Ephesians chapter 5, Paul tells believers to live differently than the godless world around them, and to be a light in the darkness.
That light shines in how we treat our spouses, our families, and the people in our lives.
But Paul has no illusions about how difficult this will be. If we’re going to be effective in living a godly life, we must be wise to the forces that will battle us every step of the way.
It is this grim recognition that leads Paul to issue one of the most famous warnings in the Bible in chapter 6:
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”
If we’re going into an unfamiliar situation like buying a car or a house, we need to know what we don’t know and how to protect ourselves from what can harm us. This kind of preparation is wise for earthly transactions.
Yet, if we require such defense for the things that pass away, how much more diligently should we put on the armor of God to protect ourselves in this battle, which has eternal consequences?
