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A Choice of Culture
”No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
The word economy means: the order of a house, the management, regulation, and government of a household, especially the management of the monetary concerns of a household, hence a frugal and judicious use of money.[27]
It is important to note that when we speak of the economic thread, we are not speaking exclusively about money. By definition, economics has to do with the management, regulation and government of the household. So in applying economics to the national level, for the purposes of this book, I am speaking about the management of our entire country. As a nation, we are unique. We have a republic where states share power with the federal government. We have three defined branches of government designed with checks and balances to keep everything functioning with harmony and order. But, if the system was set up so well, why is our country in such chaos?
When this nation was founded, the majority of people believed in the Author of Good. As time passed, our pursuit and understanding of Him began to diminish. As a nation we began to turn increasingly away from Him. More recently, the growth of technology and influence of a more secularized mass media began to take its toll. The effect was that the new technology that shaped the industrial era increased productivity so much that our nation began to enjoy great wealth and prosperity. Our new “toys” such as cars, TV’s, and appliances, etc. began to turn our hearts away from the proper priorities of life, i.e., the spiritual and moral aspects, toward the economic.
So our nation began to shift. Managing our possessions became more important than managing our moral underpinnings. The more “toys” we had, the more selfish we became. However much we had, it seemed we needed even more money to buy more things. This shift in heart attitudes began to destroy our families because fathers had to work longer hours to “maintain the lifestyle”. And when that wasn’t enough, mom had to go to work as well. Mom and dad, who were to teach us about the Author of Good, became too busy to even teach us what they learned from their parents. Schools, which were originally intended to teach helpful and valuable information, began to promote what was evil as well as good. This occurred because they were increasingly taken over by those who were more in harmony philosophically with the author of evil than the Author of Good. As a result, they started teaching our kids evil ways instead of good ways. As a matter of fact, our kids couldn’t even talk to the Author of Good in a public manner or even mention His name anymore.
As the Author of Good was expelled from our schools, He was replaced by the author of evil. As the number of those who didn’t know the Author of Good increased and the number of those who did know Him decreased, our system of democracy promoted the majority into leadership. Now we have a majority of people influencing our nation who are more aligned with the author of evil than with the Author of Good. The new immoral majority started changing our laws to fit their perspective of right and wrong.
The problem with the republic is that the immoral majority is in control. The founding fathers could not have foreseen the degree of influence evil would come to have on our nation. Certainly, our economic wealth increased beyond what they could foresee. How could they have known the impact that our quest for money and power would have on our moral foundation? Who among them would have foreseen the economic thread replacing the moral thread as the foundation of our nation? If they had anticipated these coming events, I believe they would have attempted to put more checks and balances of a moral nature in place to thwart the rise of evil.
While I believe there were five underlying reasons for our economic collapse, there was really one root cause:
We started lending money to people who couldn’t afford a loan
We told ourselves it was okay to do so
We sold those loans to investors without telling them the risk involved (Rating companies rated these securities AAA)
Our government, because of immoral leaders, allowed, encouraged, and even forced lenders into this behavior
Because of greed and speculation, the price of energy, especially oil, spiked to an all-time high. The cost to produce a barrel of oil was way out of balance with what it sold for.
As bad as these five activities were, they were not the real problem. The root cause was that people became greedy in their pursuit of personal wealth. Paul tells us that one root of evil is the love of money.
“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
(1 Tim. 6:9-10, NKJV)
Greed (which comes from the author of evil) blinded many of our citizens. When our national leaders are under his influence, we wind up with physical, emotional, and spiritual poverty instead of the abundant life that God intended. Our great national wealth has been mismanaged at every step because it has been managed in so many cases by immoral people. What would our economy look like if elected officials were people with moral character and integrity?
Most importantly, our national fall truly began when we allowed children in the womb to be murdered for the sake of lust, laziness and the desire not to be inconvenienced. When abortion became the law of the land, we officially sanctioned evil at the national level. We men ate the apple given to us by our women. We took a bite and all hell literally broke loose. We fed our lust and laziness at the expense of the lives of unborn children.
We substituted our reason for the wisdom of the Author of Good. Our reasoning said we couldn’t afford more children, that we could make abortion to be a form of birth control, that children are a burden instead of a gift from Him. The appetite of our selfishness expanded beyond lust into greed, indifference and escapism. We men abdicated our roles in the management of our homes and by so doing we took a back seat in the management of our country.
The bottom line is this: The foundation of a nation is not its constitution and laws but the character of its people. If a nation’s leaders lack moral integrity, i.e., their character is built on the wrong foundation, the nation will fail. Just like a faulty foundation undermines a house, if our national foundation is bad, it doesn’t matter what system of economics we use, we are doomed to fall apart. The latest economic fiasco is beyond a wake-up call; it is the final alarm. We as a nation must wake up or we will be sleeping even as we are heading for a final collapse. It is not primarily our economic system that we need to fix; rather it is our moral underpinnings. Once we fix the moral thread, the economy will start to heal. This leads to Truth #8 and #9 regarding the management of economic threads.
Good leaders abhor wrongdoing of all kinds; sound leadership has a moral foundation.
(Prov. 16:12, The Message)
For the wicked are moral weaklings but the righteous are GOD-strong.
(Psalms 37:17, The Message)
Moral people are spiritual people. They have a basis for what they believe. They know the Author of Good and because of their relationship with Him learn to discern good and evil from His perspective. In fact, He trains them in the realm of their character.
But, can a person be moral and not spiritual? In the ultimate sense, the answer is no. From a spiritual perspective, you are either connected to the Author of Good or the author of evil. There is no middle ground. In fact, if you don’t have a relationship with the Author of Good and you consider yourself to be wise enough to discern good from evil on your own, you have already been deceived by the author of evil. To be clear, those who attempt to determine good from evil on their own, are really trying to replace in their own lives the only one capable of even defining those terms. To replace Him, you would have had to create the universe.
Obviously no one is qualified to take His place. Amazingly, there are those who think they can, and many others actually believe them! The most absurd part is that many of these people consider those who are spiritual to be religious crackpots and fanatics! But the real issue facing us has to do with how we define people who think they know more than the Author of Good. There are probably many ways to define them, but really what they are is lost. Today, many in our society are lost and need to find the road that leads to proper thinking. We are not now and never will be the Author. However, the good news is that we can consult Him and listen to Him. When we do, good things happen.
Why are moral rather than immoral people better qualified to manage the house (i.e., lead the nation)? The reason for this is that so many people incorrectly consider themselves to be moral. In other words, they don’t even have a handle on what is right and wrong for their own lives. How can they properly lead a nation? They base their conclusions concerning morality on their reasoning instead of what the Author of Good says. Are you seeing the picture clearly yet? As a people, we are so grounded in our various definitions of right and wrong that we forget to consult the Author of Good for those decisions. As a result, we end up on the wrong track.
The Author of Good has condensed the subject of morality down to one basic principle-love. He did so because He is love. The problem is, we do not understand what authentic love is. When we try to comprehend Him, there is much we cannot understand because He is so awesome and so majestic. His perspective is so much greater than our brains can handle. But the good news is, that if we seek Him, we will find Him and He will give us revelation knowledge of who He is and how to live an abundant life, if we would only seek Him. Let’s take a close look at this word love.
Here is what the Author of Good has revealed to us in His manual:
Love:
Desires to know to the Author of Good and be obedient to Him
Esteems others higher than self
Does nothing from selfish ambition or conceit
Looks out not only for self-interests, but for the interests of others
Is patient and kind
Does not want what others have (envy)
Cares more for others than for self
Does not boast or have a swelled head
Does not force itself on others
Does not fly off the handle
Does not keep a record of the bad or selfish things others do
Does not rejoice when others experience difficult times
Rejoices when people discover truth
Puts up with unfair treatment
Always trusts the Author of Good
Always looks for the best
Never looks back
Endures all things
Never fails
He not only communicated these truths through His manual, He also gave us a living, breathing example of what He meant. He sent His Son as a messenger to exemplify His own nature, which is perfect love. He taught us that the epitome of love is to die not just for those who love you, but even for your enemies.
Now consider those in both business and government leadership positions in our country. Imagine if they had the character and moral integrity to actually put such love into practice. Do you think we would be in the moral and economic abyss that we are currently in? Would leaders be jockeying for power? What could the political and business landscape of our country look like? And is it even possible for love and capitalism or any other “ism” to co-exist?
Such love is very foreign to our national way of thinking. Why? Because without the moral thread, the economic thread creates a culture of greed. Our economic system is based on consumption. When we stop consuming, our economy slows down. Don’t misunderstand; there is nothing wrong with having material possessions. But when we put our desire for such things ahead of love, then our priorities are out of order and we fall into selfish ways. Selfishness expresses the nature of the author of evil and is the opposite of love. On the other hand, the Author of Good is not selfish at all, He is an abundant giver.
The Author of Good manages the moral and the economic threads together. In His economy, that is, in the way He manages his house, His currency is His own love. There, He intertwines the moral and the economic threads. Obviously, He doesn’t need material possessions or physical wealth. Rather, He has created everything in nature for us as physical beings. But we are not to be sidetracked by pursuing natural wealth. Rather, we are to discover the eternal currency. As he manages His house, He wants us to come to Him and get as much as we need. He is the Federal Reserve, the World Bank and Fort Knox combined. Since He has all the currency we need, we can get as much from him as is necessary. But it costs us everything. In other words, we have to give up everything we own in this world. However the more we give away what is ours, the more of what is His we receive. The law of supply and demand undergirds His whole economic approach. His demand is love and His supply grace (Grace is the ability to do good). The miracle of God’s economy is that He supplies all that is necessary to produce all that He demands. He has a different way of managing His house than we do ours and the sooner we learn His ways, the sooner we will reap an abundant life.
How we manage our house (i.e., our nation) is up to us. Today, we are seeing the results of a variety of man-made systems. But, nothing we have come up with holds the solution to our problems. Each generation has had to discover this truth for itself. What we have invented through our wisdom, our reasoning, will always fall short. But when we begin to humbly rely on the wisdom of the Author of Good, we will begin to see things work. We will begin to see His order taking shape and bearing fruit among us. The results will be incredible and we will move from extreme poverty into much greater wealth than we could possibly imagine.
I believe the framers of our constitution understood these ideas. I believe they attempted to create a government that was not a typical earthly government. They wanted one that was the opposite of Babylon. (i.e., one which did not reflect the confusion in the souls of fallen men). I believe they wanted a Nation under God: the one true God…The Author of Good.
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