Staggering Waste or Staggering Opportunity

I am not a doom-and-gloomer. Our Savior is too wonderful for us to ever be one. Does that mean that I never get bugged by stuff? Hardly. (Laughing here) I get bugged by the stuff the world does all the time. No one living today, has ever seen the likes of what is going on financially in the world at this time. Sorry, but my parents both lived through the depression. My father graduated high school in 1929, the year the stock market crashed. He went to a college and studied to become an osteopath, but he couldn't make enough to support himself and study too. He tried a lesser school with a different goal but soon found himself struggling once more. Eventually he found himself working in the fields picking different types of produce until he literally dropped. Ultimately in the mid-1930s he joined the Army in order to be able to have regular meals.

His story was not unusual, and there were many people who had a much rougher time than he did. My own mom was born in 1927 and her experiences were bleak. She and her large family lost their father in the middle of the Great Depression and often ate what she called "lard sandwiches". Homemade bread topped with lard. I asked her once (idiot) if she liked lard sandwiches and she looked at me with compassion for my ignorance and said that she and her family hadn't eaten them because they liked them, they had eaten them because they were hungry. Not everyone had food every day. Will that sort of scenario happen again? Yes, it will because the Bible tells us that it is coming. I know some will argue that I have the prophecy misplaced, but that's okay. This is my blog, not theirs. (Laughing here)

The sheer scope of the global financial crisis that is being played out before us is staggering to me, to say nothing of how fast it is happening. It's no secret that the stock market reacts strongly to social phenomena connected to economic events, and the steady flow of bad news that has been streaming out since late last August or early September (I can't remember which) has seen the injection of in excess of ten trillion dollars into our financial framework by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve.

That hasn't seemed to help much. Our country's economy is still failing. Just last week, a projected 2009 deficit of one hundred seventy-five trillion dollars was announced by the Obama administration. Why? Last year's deficit was four hundred thirty-five billion by comparison. That is a difference of one trillion, three hundred forty billion dollars. We just went from a grossly irresponsible deficit to a mind-boggling ridiculous sum of money in one fell swoop.

The rest of the world is not immune to what is happening here by any means, but the difference here in the United States is in the shift in the minds of many people toward a socialistic solution to the problem. For two hundred thirty-three years, this nation has thrived with a free-enterprise philosophy of opportunity and individual liberty. That's a bit of an over-simplification, sorry, and there have been bail-outs of one sort or another here and there through the years, but now we have corporation heads getting billion-dollar checks from the government. That just pushes the United Stats citizenry toward a collective eventually desensitized and tacit approval of such practices. Many are thrilled with the idea already. Many (myself included) are angered by it.

Now we have the Prime Minister of the UK pushing for a "global new deal" with President Obama this week. He has already made sure to spin his proposal in the press so that his intent will be as optimistically met as possible with the President. The twenty richest nations in the world that will be meeting for the G20 summit April first will be considerably poorer this year than last year. The immense spending by the U.S. government will be matched only by the interest debt it will incur. Hard but true--every dollar the government spends translates into a dollar of interest and taxation to come. It has to be paid back, and we don't have it, so the government will borrow money and the cycle will continue.

Barack Obama is an idealistic novice, and it shows. So apparently, is Gordon Brown. President Obama along with the his supporters did not bother to read the eleven hundred plus pages of the stimulus package. That was reckless and irresponsible. One wonders how ambitious the plan for a "global new deal" might be. Buckle up, because if the President is interested it could really get bumpy, chiefly because any worldwide "new deal" plan will be linked to global warming. I know that I should get the "broken record" award but it happens to be true. In absence of scientific fact, man-caused global warming proponents have made "consensus", and that is worse. It allows alarmist factions to make inroads into government, and it will be one of the tools with which governments will construct bridges from one economy to another. I could easily be wrong about that but any way you slice it, a "global new deal" will cost even more staggering amounts of money. We likely have already surpassed our ability to pay back what we now owe. Any additional grandiose plans by this government coupled with those of other governments will solidify that fact.

I listened to 1st and 2ND Kings yesterday, and I became mindful of the programs that Solomon implemented to bring about the goals he had in mind. He so burdened the people of Israel with labor that the country rebelled and split in two after his reign. People will not be happy when they are taxed to the point of spending most of their labors to pay back a debt that they ultimately will believe that they did not incur. They will get tired of the current guy promising to get them out of this economic mess, and they will begin to look for help from a financial hero to come riding to their rescue. Who will that be? Will the Antichrist front that agenda too?

I don't really look upon all of this mess as a spiritual burden. I look at it as a blessing. People will be wanting real solutions for their problems and real answers to their questions. We have the real solution, the real cure for their pain. We have the answer to any man's sin problem, and because of all of this we may have an even more attentive audience. President Obama's new Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel has said, "Never allow a crisis to go to waste." I could not agree more. This may be perhaps in centuries the best opportunity that many of us have had to show benevolence and care to unbelievers, and to reach out to them with the gospel of Jesus. My prayer is that the time does not pass wasted.