Hi SP,
Well, you asked for thoughts, and here are mine.
I'm not particularly crazy about the technology. I have no problem swiping my phone or CC to make purchases. I'm not ready to implant in my body devices that enable me to buy things. If my CC goes bad, i.e. the chip becomes unreadable or it is lost or stolen, I can easily get a free replacement card mailed to my home. If there's any kind of malfunction in an implanted chip, who pays for inserting a new one and does that mean that I'll have to go somewhere to have the procedure done? With the CC, I just make a phone call, explain the situation from my home, and sit in my home waiting for the new CC. I can even pay an extra charge of $20 or so to have the new card overnighted to me. With a defective implant, do I have to make an appointment to go to a doctor's office to have the old chip removed and a new one implanted? Who's going to pay for that? I'm sure it would be more than $20 and I imagine it would take me more than 24 hours to get it done. I understand that the implant procedure is fairly easy, but what about the removal procedure, should that become necessary?
Everyone praises how easy this system is so far as everything works as it should. However, as with most all man-made technology, what about the cases that begin to arise when everything doesn't work as it should? When you begin to implant several million people, there are bound to be arising complications. Possible infections at the injection site. A chip that somehow got damaged because a carpenter hit it with his hammer when missing a nail. A chip implant that didn't quite get sealed properly in manufacture and is possibly destroyed by being subjected to the liquids in the body. I agree that the possibility of losing or someone else misusing your credit may be lessened, but I'm not convinced that such problems require such an invasive procedure to correct.
Finally, let me ask, what happens if the chip isn't readable at the POS. I carry 3-4 CC with me and if I happen to be standing in the store and for some reason one CC doesn't work, I just pull out another one and complete the purchase and when I get home I call the CC company to find out what happened. I've had CC purchases turned down because I was on vacation and they put a hold on because all of the sudden charges were coming from unexpected locations. I've also had CC purchases denied because something I did met their algorithmic fraud metrics. They put a hold on the card, without letting me know, and I'm standing in the store trying to buy something. If some of these same problems arose with an implanted chip, what are my options? Do I then have to pull out hard copies of my CC's to complete the purchase? If I do, then that means that I still have to carry my CC's with me all the time. What's the point?
However, I'm also not convinced that such technology as this is what the Scriptures are speaking of when it talks about the mark of the beast or our not being able to buy or sell without such mark. One of the Scriptural references that convinces me that this is not what's being referenced is that the Scriptures say 'hand or forehead'. Who's going to put a chip implant on their forehead? There's no fatty tissue there and so any implant is going to show and then who's going to bend their head down to swipe some information stored in their forehead? The hand is certainly understandable, but the forehead? So, based on that understanding, I have my doubts that the 'mark' is some implantable chip.
God bless you,
In Christ, ted
