Learning hard lessons - Time to put a brake on car debt spiral?

WE all too easily blame fate for the misfortunes that afflict us. Fate is a convenient catchall that hides behind the fatalism underpinning the Calvinists’ Westminster Confession of Faith which declares that our lives are “freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass”.

It suggests that everything has been decided by a higher power and that we are just bit players in a divine comedy. Grand, freeing work if you can get it.

In a world where despair seems to lurk around almost every corner that doctrine can offer attractive options. However, anyone seduced by it will struggle to live a modestly secure life because it suggests we do not need to learn from our mistakes so we might not repeat them.