Assume a Can Opener

Inflation jokes have been everywhere lately. You have probably heard a few.

Inflation is so bad, I received a pre-declined credit card in the mail. Inflation is so bad, McDonald's is selling the quarter ouncer. Inflation is so bad, a picture is now only worth 100 words.

They are funny because they describe something real. The stubborn gap between what we think something is worth and what it actually costs in the current economy.

But the joke that really stops me is the one about the physicist, the chemist, and the economist stranded on a desert island with a single can of food and no way to open it.

The physicist says smash it with a rock. The chemist says build a fire and heat it until it bursts. The economist says: no, no. Assume a can opener.

Assume a can opener. Build your entire framework around a tool you do not have and never bothered to account for. The solution is elegant, internally consistent, and completely useless when the actual moment of hunger arrives.

Here is what kept me up this week. There is a moment coming when the books will be opened. And on that day, assuming a can opener will not work at all.

The book of Revelation describes it plainly: "I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds." (Revelation 20:12)

Books. Plural. A ledger of deeds. An account that has been running your whole life. Every thought, every action, every moment of the ordinary Tuesday you assumed nobody was watching.

This is not a new idea invented by John on Patmos. The ancient Jewish understanding of the end times had always included a heavenly courtroom. On Rosh HaShanah, the new year, the books are opened and judgment begins. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the verdict is sealed. In that courtroom, the accuser stands at the right hand of the accused and the prosecution runs the case from the accumulated record of everything that was done wrong.

The Talmud, the rabbinical writings, says it directly: sin is crouching at the door. The accuser has his arguments ready. He works day and night. He has been building the case against you for your entire life. And on the day the books are opened, he will present every item on the ledger with precision.

Here is the problem with the economist's solution in that courtroom: you cannot assume your way to a clean account. You cannot assume you are more righteous than the ledger says. You cannot assume the debt does not exist simply because it makes your theology more comfortable. The books do not work on assumptions. They work on records.

And the record of every human being who has ever lived tells the same story. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) Every page. Every person. The great and the small standing before the throne all share the same problem: the account is not clean.

So what does the day of final judgment look like for someone whose account is not clean?

It looks like Yom Kippur. And Yom Kippur looks like this.
The lessons teach that on the Day of Atonement, the most dramatic reversal in the heavenly courtroom takes place. The accuser, who has been prosecuting with everything he has, is suddenly muzzled. He cannot speak. Because God Himself intervenes and does something that no amount of good behavior, religious performance, or moral effort could ever accomplish: He wipes the account clean.
Leviticus 16:30 says it: "On this day, atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD." All your sins. Not most of them. Not the ones you managed to cover with sufficient repentance. All of them. In one day.

Isaiah saw this same moment from a different angle: "I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day." (Zechariah 3:9) And elsewhere: "Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool." (Isaiah 1:18)

The lessons describe Yom Kippur in the Messianic Era this way: the Messiah appears in the Temple clothed in white garments, together with His blessed holy ones, all of them clothed in the righteous deeds of the saints. Zechariah saw a high priest standing before God in filthy garments while the accuser pressed his case, and then God said: remove the filthy garments and clothe him in festal robes. The prosecution collapsed not because the accused was innocent but because someone greater than the charges intervened.

That is the economy of the end of days. Not a ledger you balanced yourself. A debt cancelled by the only One who had the authority and the resources to cancel it.

The economist in the joke assumed a can opener he did not possess. Every form of self-righteousness does the same thing. It assumes a clean account that the record does not support. It assumes that the gap between what the books show and what is needed at the judgment will somehow work itself out.

It will not work itself out. But it can be worked out for you.

Yom Kippur was always a picture pointing forward to the day when God would silence the accuser permanently, remove the iniquity of the land in one day, and write His people's names in the book of life not because of what they had earned but because of what He had provided.

That day is still coming. And the only question that matters between now and then is whose righteousness you are standing in when the books are opened.

The inflation jokes are funny because inflation is real and the gap between what we have and what things cost is real. The spiritual version of that gap is not funny at all. It is the most serious accounting problem in the universe.

You cannot assume a can opener. You cannot assume a righteousness you have not actually received. The books will be opened. The record is real.

But here is the good news that the whole eschatological calendar was always pointing toward. The same God who opens the books also holds the book of life. And the names written there are not written in the ink of human achievement. They are written in something that does not fade, does not inflate, and does not depend on the accuracy of your self-assessment.

The accuser will have nothing to say on that day. Because God will have already said the only thing that matters: this one is clean.

Make sure you know whose account you are standing in before the day the books open.