Rather random. Incomplete. Just things I keep thinking.
1. I’m convinced that some of the news media (***cough*** Fox ***cough***) are using the financial situation to create a “panic” audience. That is, they are putting on every extreme, doomsday voice they can, they are ignoring larger context, they are keeping their audiences convinced this is the end of the world, and then they are hauling in the advertisers. I’m surprised that so many Christians are failing to notice the agenda of much of the news media in this situation.
2. I’m not discounting the seriousness of the situation when I make the observation in statement #1. I’m not saying the doomsday team isn’t right. I’m not in any position to say what is going on, but I am concerned that the news and opinion on some venues is being selected with a good deal of bias. The information picture is large and complex. Throwing the worst case scenarios out there hour after hour seems to be a specific tactic with a specific (political) goal in mind.
3. I listen to a good bit of BBC and CBC. It’s not panic headlines 24-7. There seems to be more context. It’s the same crisis, and there are a lot of very unflattering things said about the U.S., the stimulus, the bailouts, businesses, government, etc. But I don’t hear these media outlets playing the situation for panic, profit or politics.
4. There are economic “laws of gravity.” Simple, fundamental laws of “what goes up, must come down.” It seems to me that we’ve been ignoring these laws for decades. We don’t save money. We don’t spend carefully. We don’t have sufficient income. We don’t pay for what we purchase. Millions of us have no plans to honestly earn a living and live within what we earn. We ignore all these laws of gravity, and we build a system– almost a financial amusement park– that allows us to avoid this reality and rewards our greed. What’s happened? Nothing we shouldn’t have expected eventually. What were we thinking?
5. The detachment of our economic life from reality has caused us to develop an unrestricted consumer mentality. If this economic crisis is going to do us any favors, it will convince us that we have to come back to earth in earning, saving and spending. It will reattachment our consumerism to what we can earn, save and spend.
6. I have to admit that I’m quite happy that this ridiculous consumeristic spiral is going to have to slow down. I’m not one of these liberals who prays for disaster so we can all live with a goat and never use another gallon of gas, but the quality of human life made possible by INSANE credit practices and INSANE materialistic appetites needed some brakes before all relation to reality left the planet.
7. It’s interesting to watch people think the thought, “This could go on for years. I may have to (insert something related to work, modest retirement, smaller accommodations, etc.)” In it’s way, this is the disempowerment of our destiny that a person feels when they hear a serious medical diagnosis and they realize they have lost control. They cannot MAKE reality bend to their will. They have lost the power to guarantee outcomes. They must depend on a higher power who isn’t cooperating; who isn’t letting them determine what “all things for good” means.
This is the tragedy of the bailouts. For the most part, they reward with survival what the economic system has deemed unworthy of survival.
8. In a way, this is “welcome to Kingdom of God practice.” The values are upside down. We aren’t living out of our abundance, but out of God’s faithful provision. The last may be first, literally. The first are discovering what it’s like to be last. The values of the Kingdom of God can’t just be a dressed up version of our own values. We’re going to get a chance to ask, “Do I really believe this? Will I really live this?”
9. My dad was born in 1911; my mom in 1921. Both were born to poor, rural families in different parts of the country. My mom experienced the Great Depression as a child and teenager. My dad experienced it as a young adult. For both of them, it was clearly the defining experience of their lives. My dad buried money in the back yard as long as I knew him. I thought he was crazy. (Now I’m scouting out good holes.) Both of them had adopted values about personal spending and saving that were totally at variance with my own values.
10. For example, my mother never spent money on herself. I never saw her buy a new item of clothing other than undergarments. She always– always– bought from yard sales and thrift stores. She bought all our clothes there as well. My parents might buy a pair of shoes at a shoe store, but that was a major event.
When I started working for a local grocery store, I took my first check and bought two new shirts. My dad completely freaked out. I never saw such a reaction. He wanted me to save ALL of my check, and all of my future checks. Church, gas, insurance, and some help for the family were appropriate expenditures, but new clothes, gadgets, toys, music all were not. It was a war for me to get the right to buy an occasional record. All of this grew out of the influence of the Great Depression on my parents. They simply had an entirely different relationship with money than I’ve ever had.
11. One of the moments of my life that is most prominent in my memory is my dad taking me to the local Savings and Loan to open up a savings account. Not a checking account or a line of credit. No, a savings account. I was expected to put as much of my money as possible into that savings account so I could buy a car or pay for college. I would assume that ritual today has been replaced with getting your first credit card or cell phone.
12. It’s become apparent that 9-11 was not a defining experience for our generation or our children. Will this financial experience become a great, shared, defining experience? Will the experience of losing a house, losing a job, kids getting part time jobs, etc., moving in with other family, etc., all become a defining experience for this generation? We are going to come face to face with our expectations of what we can do with money, and I’m convinced that we are going to come away from this with a changed perspective about money. I’m not hoping or praying for any kind of return to the previous system. I’d prefer a return to saving, to sanity and to modest expectations of what credit means and does.
13. Denise and I have very little of anything. In a way, this has made us worry less and made whatever adjustments we are contemplating seem like less of an issue. Still, just having entered our fifties and looking at the future, the thought I keep having is that nothing is more valuable than our faith and trust in God. I see people, good people, losing their grip on their faith and going into panic. I see a lot of anger and manipulation happening, and I think, “Where would we be without God’s promises?” I know that one day this will be a sentence or two in some history book, I’ll be dust and all will proceed on with not even a nod at my net worth. My treasure has to be in heaven or else the moth, rust, rot and ruin will drive me to despair.
14. Thanks God for “Holy poverty,” and I don’t just mean as some rhetoric in an article about the saints. I mean the people I know who embrace poverty and the life of poverty; people who don’t need more than a few things to be who they are on any given day, and have enormous, ever-increasing gratitude for the small things that are provided. I’ve lived a lifetime in a culture that says I must have a warehouse of possessions to be happy, but I know from watching my grandmother, my mother, the poor Christians in Appalachia and in the inner city and some of my fellow servants/ministers that this is not necessary. Simplicity, poverty, holiness, good gifts and positive pleasures: they are all part of this life.
15. Strange way to end this, I know: Thank God a hundred thousand times for DAVE RAMSAY, who led us to get out of debt almost ten years ago. I don’t have “piles and piles of cash,” but Ramsay has been an incredible mentor in being debt free and happy about it.
The Internet Monk Archives 
Im still not quite awake….Correction…
“They honor Me with their lips but their hearts are far from me”
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Sorry “they honor Me” not Him
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Its pretty obvious God is knocking over Americas golden calf the way Moses did the Israelites calf in the desert.We are no different than the Israelites were because fallen human nature hasnt changed a bit and there is nothing new under the sun.
“They honor Him with our lips but their hearts are far from me”
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0oGkii2LqRJ.UoAMnNXNyoA?ei=UTF-8&p=wall%20street%20bull&fr2=tab-web&fr=yfp-t-501
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Re: BBC… What we see of the BBC on US television and hear syndicated on the radio is rather different than what the typical Brit sees and hears on BBC domestic news. While the presentation is almost always a bit more linguistically polished and tends to go more in depth, there is a clear disdain for things conservative and in particular, things conservative and American. Whether this stems from neo-class-consciousness or just a sneering superiority complex vis-a-vis the “colonials,” the end result is that much of the British populace views Americans (save for the American leftists who they have a fuzzy love for) as a mass of uneducated rednecks clinging to their guns and God. BBC is hardly the scion of objectivity that those of us who grew up with World Service on shortwave radio and Alistair Cook were enamored with. We’re all the poorer for it.
Zoomie (who lived in the UK from 2003-2008)
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it could be the doormat to an awakening.
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Fox, MSNBC, CNN — they’re all to a point where avoiding them is probably a good thing. Panic and controversy sells, be it a market crash or an escaped monkey. — Justin V
If you want capital-P PANIC, try Art Bell (or whoever’s hosting his show these days) sometime… I can’t tell the difference these days between Art Bell, Hal Lindsay, or South Park.
K. W. — Your comments about the church people saying, “I’ll pray for you†and yet do nothing, brings back memories. — Anna A
Same here. “I’ll Pray For You (TM)” is just a Christianese excuse for doing nothing and sounding oh-so-pious about doing nothing.
These days, whenever somebody uses the “I’ll Pray for You” line on me, I come back with a line from Babylon-5: “We too have a saying. PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS.”
Well, I work with a lot of conservative Christians and they talk about Fox endlessly. … The whole idea of building a loyal audience through apocalyptic reporting just doesn’t seem to be on the map. — IMonk
Well, “building a loyal audience through apocalyptic reporting” WORKS. And it really works with Evangelical Christians. Just check a lot of Christian “Rapture Ready” media for a non-MSM example.
Too many Christians are “living just this side of Left Behind and find it all Very Exciting.” Christ got thrown under the Grinning Apocalyptic bus (and the YEC bus, and the Culture War bus) a long time ago.
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Shayne
“Most points, I don’t agree with – either, the context or degree – the point which is the saddest, is point 6.
Many, many, hundreds of millions will suffer. …”
Agreed. But the US in particular and Western “powers” in general have been on a 50 year economic bender. Spending more than we produce. And the longer we take (took maybe) to stop it the worse the pain will be. It had to stop or the pain would get totally out of hand.
I liken it to diabetics who avoid seeing the doctor over foot infections due to poor circulation and wind up loosing their foot, leg, or life eventually.
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Here’s a great example of elite cluelessness vs. the Dave Ramsey rooted rationality — http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/business/worldbusiness/22japan.html
Apparently if we don’t all get back to consuming radically, we’re the problem. I’d feel gleefully sarcastic about this if it weren’t for the fact that i suspect the folks writing stuff like this know just enough of what they’re talking about to mean that we are going to have a long, hard, tough slog through this economic “adjustment,” because we simply can’t go back to what we’ve been doing . . . which is mainly what i hear Michael saying here.
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One of the best side effects of this entire national frenzy would be if Christians simply stopped watching TV. All of it.
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Based on a few months of unexpected good financial times right before the financial crisis hit my industry in earnest, I managed to pay off both my credit cards last year. I hadn’t expected to. I hadn’t planned to. But it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I tell ya, rarely a week goes by now that I don’t thank God I was able to do that. Not having two extra bills is nice, but what’s really nice is not having that particular burden of debt hanging over my head. I mean, the monthly change in my budget isn’t signficant, what with making less money than I was a year ago and all. But the peace of mind is so good. And I really do think that was God watching out for me. Like I said, I hadn’t planned to pay ’em off then. I just ran the numbers one day after a paycheck and realized I could, so I did.
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Thanks, Michael, for an excellent post. It hit one of my hot buttons. I am thoroughly liberal–maybe not living with the goats, although they’re lovely animals that can provide milk, meat, and hair for spinning, if you’re so inclined; but the homeowners’ association in my townhouse development would have a fit–and I agree with you. I wish that the news media would knock off the drumbeat of disaster and offer some practical suggestions. But disaster gets ratings, and American TV lives and dies by ratings.
Still, Americans–including the government–have been on an economic bender, spending money we didn’t have on stuff we didn’t need, and it has to stop. We need to figure out what our means are, live within them, and have money left over to save–and when we do, it may mean that the whole world’s economy will need to be restructured. The doomsayers may well be right that we’re in for very rough times.
I see God’s role in all this as providing us what we need–the fortitude to get through it and learn from it–not the stuff we might want, or making everything like it was before the house of cards that was our economy collapsed. We’re going to need each other again. That part’s not bad at all.
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Most points, I don’t agree with – either, the context or degree – the point which is the saddest, is point 6.
Many, many, hundreds of millions will suffer.
In China, already 20 million have lost their jobs – their government is already starting to think of measures to reduce the social unrest – this MUST send a warning to everyone in the US (Who’s the enemy that caused this? WW1, WW2).
Point 6 – Right, if you have read and understood anything of Malkiel, Lynch, Buffett, Soros, Bernstein, Greenspan, etc – you may start to realise that the $US is fragile – therefore, being debt free is of no value, if the $US fails. And, there is currently pressure from Asia, EU, Russia, OPEC (Iran) to move to a ‘basket of currencies’ away from the $US, esp in regard to derivatives (oil futures, in particular).
You say, that this issue – will only take a few lines in the history books … I say, that if God does not intervene it’s the end of Pax Amerika. It’s that simple.
Print money, like there’s no tomorrow, and it becomes worthless. You can use that quote 🙂
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“……I’m quite happy that this ridiculous consumeristic spiral is going to have to slow down.”
You know Michael, this is the same insensitive drivel that people always spout when they’re not the ones touched by suffering. Human beings, even Christians are so self righteous and it is an ever present temptation to detach ourselves from the suffering because, after all, they were “stupid”, “greedy” “imprudent” “materialistic” or maybe just plain “born wrong”.
The answer to materialistic society is Law and Gospel.
But it’s just so simple to talk about other’s sin and make cliched, pietistic statements, as you do above.
Real people are suffering, Michael, and many of them, not as the result of profligate spending, materialism or poor choices. They are the people who lose the jobs after 30 year careers because of lousy decisions or shenanigans by upper management. They are business owners who invested years of hard labor building their businesses, only to see a situation THEY DID NOT create, strip them of all they’ve ever scrimped and saved for. They are not the mavens of Wall Street. They are not the thieves who created a 600 TRILLION dollar synthetic pyramid scheme, These aren’t people wearing Armani and bling. They’re INNOCENT VICTIMS Michael. How can you be so flip, so cavalier, so insensitive, so simplistic.
It would be just like blaming you, or worse yet your parishoners, for the darkness in the Church when we know the culprits are found elsewhere. Would it be appropriate for someone to say, in this situation, because of the heretical teaching of others, “I’m so happy to see thousands leaving the Church monthly.”
I’m really disappointed Michael. I have found you to be a fairly compassionate, gracious individual. This time your prejudices and self righteousness are misdirected and mean spirited, although I’m sure, unintentionally so.
Everywhere I look, I hear Christians and non Christians gloating over other people’s materialism and greed, “buying houses they can’t afford” “spending beyond their means” “living like the world”, etc., etc.
Where is the heart of Christ? I’d hoped to find it here, but alas Michael, alas!
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As to help those in need I feel the SBC churches (and others) are woefully lacking in this area. About 10 years ago when my son’s church youth program set up a day to deliver turkeys and full means to some in need I irritated a lot of folks with my comments.
We were told we were going to the town of XXXXX, a smaller town on the south side of our main town. They had gotten the names and addresses of some in need from somewhere else. 95% of our church was from the north side of our main town. It was obvious to all of them that XXXXX was nothing but poorer folks. When we got to the addresses they were all in the downtown section of our main town. 5 miles from XXXXX. And every single house we delivered to had the $50/mo or more cable package going on the TV when we arrived.
I was a bit impolite letting them know they didn’t even know the geography of their back yard and why were we delivering food to people who could pay for cable better than I chose to use? Oh, yeah. 90% of the folks in town XXXXX live above the poverty line. Many way above it. But to the minds of most of your members this was where the poor folks of the area lived. Even if we never got close to it with our “mission”.
I wasn’t as welcome around the other dad’s after that. They weren’t interested in doing the “right” thing. Just showing their kids they “cared”.
A lot of church folk have a long way to go to start really helping out.
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Earl Arnold
“but the underlying principals of the fiscally conservative remain valid.
1. Less government.
2. Less government spending (Bush failed here)”
So did Regan and Bush 41. Plus all the House and Senate majorities. Especially after Newt and Armey left. (I’m not a big fan of NG and DA but they did try and change the system somewhat and got shown the door for it.)
willoh
“1984 did not come true.”
Actually it did, but in North Korea.
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Justin Mcfarland……hmmmm
I knew your dad in prison. “Sheep Dog” Mcfarland. Rough character. Used to use pigeons to deliver threats.
If you see him, tell him the best thing about being a Reds fan is the certainty of finishing above the Pirates.
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Very interesting reading including the comments following. We all have to get off the horrible consumer roller coaster to nowhere. It has been coming for years, and it is always sad how many never noticed it.
We have been blessed that we own our cars and have no debt beyond rent and utilities. We were also fortunate that we could convert our savings from “fiat” currency, {meaning dollars} to gold and silver
so we have something for our retirement. Our work and home situations over the years have always made us to stay within our means, which in hindsight has been a blessing.
Please I don’t say all this to brag, but to make this point, live simply which is hard at times and practice charity with your friends and neighbors.
We owe allegiance to God, faithfulness to our family and civility to our neighbors. From that all is open to be a light to the world!
Again live simple and quiet and enjoy your life!
God bless!
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RE:Fox News, my eyes were opened during the presidential campaign. Hannity and Colmes were shouting down Ron Paul, hurling accusations and asking the “Have you quit beating your wife yet?” kind of questions.(The kind that railroad you into a bad answer no matter what.) Meanwhile, underneath the video feed that showed Dr.Paul trying to deal with those thugs, the caption read “BROTHEL OWNER SUPPORTS RON PAUL” for the duration of the interview, about five minutes. Nice. I no longer watch Fox or support it in any way.
Dave Ramsay is the man, though.
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Michael – We definitely agree on FOX.
Leaning right in a left blowing gale is not the same as standing straight up. It’s nearly impossible to find straight up news these days.
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A lot of us who watched news for 30 years that was leaning further left than a birch in a gale welcome Fox. In about 25 years we will come even.
Justin, 1984 did not come true. Animal Farm did.
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I am currently reading 1984 for the first time, and its funny to me how even though the book is a complete work of fiction it has many aspects that can be put into todays economic crisis and if you haven’t read it and you have been keeping up with the economic stuff going on i very much suggest your read it. By the way i’m not some crazy conspiracy nut that thinks this book is going to come true or anything, its just a neat story.
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I am a new fan of this blog. I’ve really enjoyed your posts Michael. This one though exposed me for what I am — a true partisan. I rather enjoy Fox and the battle it wages. The means may not all ways be justifiable (fear-mongering should be avoided), but the underlying principals of the fiscally conservative remain valid.
1. Less government.
2. Less government spending (Bush failed here).
3. More Capital in the hands of the people.
4. Personal responsibility.
5. Reward for the winners.
6. Loss for the losers. (the losers need only learn from loss, return to the market, and work hard to recover)
7. Fair rules and regulation for all (this is the governments’ job!)
8. Jail for the lawbreakers (this is the governments’ job!)
Last, social services should be left to the local church, synagogue, or mosque. Sadly, the organized church (some, not all) may be too busy competing for capital in its own market to make a real difference, as well as spending too little time providing care for the truly vulnerable.
Yes, Dave Ramsey is a must!
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There’s no better outreach right now than Ramsay FPU. He is a bit more confident in the stock market than anyone is now, but even then, he’s level headed. No mystical scripture verses or hidden prosperity Gospel. Get out of debt and pay your bills stupid.
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Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace Univ. is the real
deal. We have two classes going on right now
in the church I serve. Many of the people in
the classes are not members of the church,
but are coming because of the recession. Another
great post, Michael.
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In the middle ages it was referred to as the Wheel of Fortune (no, not with Pat Sajak). Things go up, things come down. One day you win, next day you lose.
I made and lost my first million in my twenties. Lesson: no big deal. God was still God and I was still me. The dog and the family didn’t mind the low bank account.
Made and lost another fortune in my thirties, another in my forties. It appears I may lose the current swag as the banking system fails (commercial loans coming due in a dearth of lending). No big deal. God is still God, I’m still me, and the family and dog still love me.
I’m stunned at how seriously people take their things; one of my business partners has suffered a nervous breakdown in all this. Why? He (and I) will be dead soon, anyhow.
Lay not your treasures…..A word of caution to Imonk readers, however: without getting too crazy and paranoid, keep an eye on the US dollar (doing surprisingly well at the moment). As students of Latin American politics and economics will attest, populist governments inevitably debauch the currency in times of crisis. And the US is now a banana republic.
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I have been obsessively coaching my girlfriends that, anything our grandmothers did to get through financial hard times, we can do to. The biggest hurdle is a mental one — having lived in the midst of unparalleled prosperity, it’s a struggle to change that mindset of consumerism-at-any-cost.
Many of my friends are switching to cloth diapering their kids. They’re putting in gardens this year. They’re becoming one-car families. They’re eating less meat. They’re learning to sew. They’re buying used clothes. And, much to everyone’s surprise, their quality of life is actually improving without all that “stuff.”
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Wcwirla:
Well, I work with a lot of conservative Christians and they talk about Fox endlessly. I never hear anything that approaches acknowledging that Fox has motives other than being purely objective. No one seems to realize that media use constant extreme position taking guests to drive ratings. In fact, no one seems to consider that money, advertising, etc are even part of the equation. The whole idea of building a loyal audience through apocalyptic reporting just doesn’t seem to be on the map. The difference between Fox and C-SPAN isn’t on the radar. (Don’t write me lurkers. I know CNN does the same thing.)
ms
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Good post. Agree with most of it. I’m not sure, though, why you say that “so many Christians are failing to notice the agenda of much of the news media in this situation.” I don’t get this sense, but perhaps I hang with a different group of Christians.
I completely agree on the need for our consumption to cool off. An economy based on consumption and deficit spending cannot sustain itself in the long haul. Savings, long-term investments, and production are the backbone of a healthy economy. The virtue of frugality will show itself wise in the long run, likewise “holy poverty.”
Nicely written.
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I wouldn’t deny a bias at the BBC. I would retract that. But they clearly aren’t covering this in the same “panic addiction” mode. There are other points of view than “the sky is falling” and the apparent moral obligation to loathe Obama. Fox sometimes really makes me feel dirty, like we’re in the neighborhood of racism.
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iMonk, I gotta call you on the BBC.
I listen to mostly NPR and BBC with a smattering of MSM (usually not by choice).
Just because the brits and NPR folks are saying it in a quieter voice doesn’t mean they’re not preaching the same message.
I quit listening to the radio altogether a while back because the overwhelming majority of their newas was about the sky falling and how it was all George W.’s fault.
They work for a living just like America’s MSM. And they tailor their coverage to get and keep listeners.
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As long as we are a service economy instead of a manufacturing economy, we are weak. A lesson from Proverbs would have saved us from this whole mess. I am a tentmaker in the Mortgage industry, providing government loans. I watched 367 lenders go out of business in the last two years. Good. They were greedy, built on foolish suppositions. Stated income, no asset verification, with a 580 credit score on a wage earner job. Now we are going to bail out people who were greedy in choosing a house and lied on their application, banks that created a market that should never have existed, car makers who make cars to expensive for their quality, and all at the price of our future prosperity.
Mr. Spencer is correct there was a lot of insanity in the mix to get us here. How sane is it to prop up an insane system? Do more than any senator did read the Stim Package. It is a Sim , package, playing The Sims on cheat.
We will come out of this, but we are not going to be the same. I have ridden out a few recessions, but I never came through one to find so much Nationalization.
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K. W.
Your comments about the church people saying, “I’ll pray for you” and yet do nothing, brings back memories.
The same thing happened to me years ago. (What I would have loved is some meals with family or being asked to join on running errands.) I will admit that one family did offer to let me live with them, but getting out of my lease, etc. would have cost more than I would have saved. Not to mention going from a large apartment to one room in a house.
That’s why I don’t say “I’m praying for you.” and do. Especially since I don’t know what kind of help to offer.
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Enforced poverty is not a good. Voluntary simplicity is. This is the time to be a fan of free market capitalism, which has done more than the church (from which it arises) to relieve human suffering. And neither is this simply a “gee, I followed Dave Ramsey and am not suffering like the rest” moment. That sounds like “I was the one who knew the secret rapture was coming.” We need to roll up our sleeves and get back into the battle of ideas. Sounds like you got tired somewhere along the way.
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Mike, you are a liberal?!?!…I am not sure what to say about that, except har har har. Come on dude, get a grip.
Mike
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Discounting channel surfing, I don’t really watch anything on TV but EWTN. I read the first few lines of this post and it made me think for some unknown reason of the Rachel Maddow Show. From the FEW minutes I’ve seen here and there I reckon she’s the opposite of FOX. She seems to be a do what thou wilt character. She also comes off as a bit of a militant lesbian too. It could be just me, but I call it as I see it; besides, my gaydar is hardly ever wrong.
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Headless Unicorn Guy:
Uh…holy buckets. I think I would definitely have to find a new financial planner.
One of the things I’m hoping about this “crisis” is that it will spur the church back to doing what we are supposed to be doing – helping people who need it. The poor, the widow, the orphan, the alien, the jobless, the homeless, the relatively secure but freaking out nonetheless, etc…
So much of this the church has either explicitly or implicitly commended into the hands of the government, and then started hollering til the cows come home about how they’re doing it wrong.
A thought occurred to me in class today, when we were discussing liberation theology. The ELCA has this huge fancy Lutheran Office of Governmental Affairs – it’s basically a big lobbying thing. We spend God-only-knows how much money on staffing that thing, sending our jet-setting Presiding Bishop all over the country and world to make grand pronouncements about how this country or that isn’t doing enough about this or that, issuing important-sounding press releases, emailing every pastor on the roster to tell them “what we said to Congress on behalf of you today,” and so on. When was the last time we – or anybody besides the Catholics – built a hospital?
If nothing else, maybe this will force churches to step up and actually fulfill the Great Commandment. One can only hope.
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My thoughts about the economic crisis are neither random or hypothetical. I’m smack dab in the middle of it.
I’ve been out of work since December and only just this week found a job. Anybody who thinks this recession is blown out of proportion hasn’t tried to go job-hunting in a community with 15 percent unemployment, and nearly a thousand people applying for the same $10 an hour job you are.
Meanwhile, my landlady is trying to figure out whether she can afford to keep her house—the one I rent. She lost her job too, and her two new part-time jobs add up to maybe 15 hours a week—and pay nearly the minimum wage. Hardly the wage-earning conditions a bank wants when you apply for a refinance.
I have one brother who’s trying to finance a family of six on $10 an hour and food stamps; I have another who works for the state and had his hours trimmed back; I have a third who, with his family, has moved in with my mom.
For us, this isn’t an intellectual exercise. Fox and the other news stations do have the story wrong. They disproportionately focus on the woes of big business and the plans of Obama and the Congress. In so doing they skim past the true problem, which you can only report so many times before the public gets tired of it and tunes it out: The jobless individuals. The families losing their homes. Those ineligible for welfare or workmen’s comp or unemployment. Families forced to live on rice and ramen. That’s the reality. Thank the Lord your incomes allow you to avoid seeing it, and that the news is playing along.
Now that everyone’s paid off their debts, though, what are they doing for their brothers and sisters in Christ who can’t find work? How is the church pooling its resources to help the needy, like the first-century church did? Or is it? I don’t see it.
Many folks in my own church told me, “Go and be warm and well-fed, and if you look really hard you’ll find work; we’ll pray for you,” and did little else. They felt bad for me, at least for the Sunday they saw me, and that’s about all. May God smite me with poverty again if I ever do so little for people who need help, ’cause I obviously hadn’t learned the lesson this time around.
Just some thoughts.
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Wow. A lot of this hit home. My dad was a teenager during the depression and thrift was ingrained and way of life for him as well. Growing up in a missionary family in a third world country, we never had a lot but never missed much and never suffered either. Today we have no debt at all and were able to pay cash for a car recently (a once in a decade event). I keep a careful budget using Excel. We have good jobs, but don’t own or do half the stuff that most people in our income bracket (or even below it) do, and don’t miss it a bit. We save or invest about 40% of what we earn. It can be done. It really does work. We don’t lack for anything really. Not only are we not really affected too much by the recent financial insanity, but most important, we are in a position to help others and to continue giving. I too wish that evangelical churches had more comprehensive and consistent teaching on financial responsibility and stewardship, and the biblical basis for it.
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Fox, MSNBC, CNN — they’re all to a point where avoiding them is probably a good thing. Panic and controversy sells, be it a market crash or an escaped monkey. Seriously, I’m kind of conservative, but I’ll keep an eye on PBS or NPR long before the big three cable nets get my money and attention again.
Good list. My parents drilled into me the mentality of savings, wise spending, and living within your means. For some, that sounds depressing. For me, it’s more depressing to see XBOXes and HDTVs all over someone’s house while they talk about having no income for a savings.
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Michael recommended about my husband, “Find a Dave Ramsey meeting or Financial Peace University at a church. Get him there with food, feminine wiles, bribery, etc.” He eats very little food…one meal per day. Keeping his weight down, he says. (He drinks a lot, though…that doesn’t make things better.) He doesn’t fall for feminine wiles, sorry to say. I have nothing to bribe him with that he would care about. PLUS…he has never met anyone he thinks knows more than he does, so he wouldn’t listen to anyone talk about money. So, there we stand. 😦
(And believe me, I am not a husband-basher. Even his own children are amazed that I am “still here” and that I tolerate…things. But I am far from perfect myself. Just don’t have the same issues he does.)
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Here’s an article on this topic by my very own priest:
http://josephpatterson.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/economic-hardship/
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I agree with your assessment to a certain extent, but I think that it is important to factor in the values of the upcoming generations. For example, I as a 24 year old mother of one don’t find the consumerist label entirely congruous with myself and my cohorts.
We found our childhoods of excess disgusting. We know that we likely won’t exceed or even match the level of wealth of our parents, but don’t care. We value equality, conservation, and feeding and obtaining healthcare for our children. Young mothers spend their free time congregating on mommy blogs, message boards and facebook discussing frugal grocery shopping, reusable cloth diapering, sustainable housekeeping, and striving to raise well-adjusted children. For us, I don’t think that this current distress was necessarily a catalyst but more of a reinforcement of what we saw as inevitable.
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To #1 and K Bryan… The American media as a whole always has an agenda and an axe to grind with someone. It’s just sad generally how many people accept all the half truths as gospel.
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I’m surprised that so many Christians are failing to notice the agenda of much of the news media in this situation.
Oh, they’re noticing it — they’re just interpreting it differently, through a filter of Grinning Apocalyptism, Late Great Planet Earth, and Left Behind. I still remember meeting with my financial planner just as everything started crashing and burning. He started the consultation with “You know that we’re living in The End Times…”
P.S. My parents were Depression Kids, too, though not as extreme as yours. I’m currently debt-free (including fully-paid-off mortgage) and saving like crazy.
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You hit the ball out of the park with #4.
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These things are cyclical. We were overdue for a depression as the US has experienced one every 60 years, give or take.
To a large extent, the news media is but a reflection of ourselves. Fox News stays in business because its viewers agree with it and find it speaks to them.
I couldn’t help but notice how many people noted they had eliminated their debt before this hit. So did I. If the news told us everything was fine and never better, would we borrow some money? Nope.
Will the coming poverty and massive unemployment move us closer to God and away from materialism? Maybe, but I’m not hopeful. It didn’t happen last time.
American culture is founded upon materialism, on individualism, on dog-eat-dog capitalism. We don’t have a problem finding passages to smite gay people with, but all that stuff about rich people not getting into heaven? That’s really not part of the American theology.
I’m not saying this to favor one passage or the other, just to illustrate that the way we read scripture gives us a mirror into ourselves, just as the news we watch.
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Er, that’s “much better here in this post”
Sorry . . .
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In addition to the ratings-mongers at the news outlets, I’d also like to throw a bone to our Speech-Maker-in-Chief. He can’t talk about the economy for more than 30 seconds without uttering the words “crisis,” “depression,” and “stimulus” at least a half a dozen times. Make people think this thing could be catastrophic, and then, if it isn’t, claim victory.
Oh, and number 4 is right on. A healthy dose of sane self-discipline all around would be great medicine (and would have been for the last few decades). Alas, self-control is a fruit of the Spirit, which comes from the gospel of Christ, which (I’m told) was sold to a smooth-talking salesmen for a bowl of red soup and a flat-screen TV sometime in the 1950’s.
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iMonk
Amen times 1000 on Dave Ramsay. My wife Jill and I are one month away from being debt free on everything but our mortgage (we live in a modest house, and will start working melting that snowball next 🙂
At thanksgiving, after crowds of people trampled a man to death at a Walmart because they wanted flat screen TVs, I wrote a post suggesting that maybe an economic depression would be good for us (lots of people didn’t like me saying that and a few accused me of praying for people to lose their jobs, etc). You’ve written what I meant then much better her in this post.
Well said.
And anytime anyone asks what they should do in these times, I always say the same: produce something, and get out of debt.
And thank God we have the Lord as our hope, and not our 401k.
Great post!
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“we live very simply and we grow much of our own food on an urban lot”
Has anyone done any studies of the heavy metals content of things grown in “urban lots”? I’ve always tried to prevent letting any “dirt” from or from very close to streets and roads get into my personal food or breathing chain.
Just a question that I don’t have an answer to.
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I am a news-junkie. I watch them all. I hear all the dooms-day analysis. I am not affected by any of the negative analysis. If hard times are to come, let them come. I am ready. I can easily live on very little. God is my provider.
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My husband and I have no debt, we live very simply and we grow much of our own food on an urban lot so at this point we are not feeling the crunch in the same way that others are. What concerns me is that many Christians, and especially churches seem to be ignoring the crisis and are doing very little to help their parishioners through this tough time
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Joanie D
Find a Dave Ramsey meeting or Financial Peace University at a church. Get him there with food, feminine wiles, bribery, etc.
Then pray for conversion.
ms
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Fox News is to real journalism what World Wrestling Entertainment is to real sports.
🙂
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Michael, in #6 you wrote, “I’m not one of these liberals who prays for disaster so we can all live with a goat and never use another gallon of gas…”
This made me laugh until I cried! Live with a goat…ha! Thanks for the laugh. (Even though what you have written is very serious. My husband and I have very different attitudes about money and we are in a bad way now due to credit cards and I am the only one bringing in an income. It’s stressful and I don’t know how it will end. He won’t even let me broach the subject of doing away with these cards.)
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As I’ve worked toward being debt-free for the last decade, I’ve been laughed at and argued with many times. I paid off my last debt in September 2008. Who’s laughing now?
Seriously, you’ve helped to inspire me to live on less, which really helped. I may never have the attitude toward money your parents did, or even that you do, but I’m learning to depend on God rather than the paychecks, and it gets a little easier when the certainty of the paychecks is less certain.
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I dunno about Fox, but have you seen anything on NBC in the past 6 months? It’s CONSTANT. We’re in the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Or the Panic of 1893, maybe.
My opinion? They were doing their d@mndest to manufacture a crisis of confidence to help Mr. Obama get elected, but it worked a little too well…
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