January 20, 2009

Number 3

VIEWPOINT

“Americans are hoping the new administration will ride into Washington like a knight in shining armor to rescue us from our economic woes.  Let’s pray it does. The sub-prime mess has shaken financial markets worldwide; it’s the deepest crisis since the Great Depression.”

That’s how Charles Colson begins his article, “A Serious Decay,” in a recent issue of Christianity Today.  In the article Colson lays out the connection between the economic crisis and our culture’s continuing march toward relativism.  Here are some more thoughts:

“Can Washington really fix all this?  The government is surely responsible in large part.  Congress was grossly negligent, so reform is desperately needed (if only Congress could reform itself).

“But if we look honestly at what started the credit crisis — moral failures and following false worldviews — we recognize that the solution demands more than any political savior can possibly deliver.

“The roots of the crisis go beyond political blunders to Wall Street, which devised a clever new product.  It was a method of urging people to take mortgages whether they could repay them or not.  The result, of course, was that many who could not afford a home were taken in.  They knew they could pay the low interest rates for the first two years, and were assured that if they could not pay higher rates once those kicked in, they could sell their houses, which were supposed to have risen in value. Everything worked so long as home prices kept rising. When theystopped rising, the scheme collapsed.

“Individuals, having collectively run up trillions in debt and a zero rate of savings, share much of the blame — but no one accepts responsibility.  This is dramatic evidence that worldviews do matter.  The dominant attitude of recent decades says there are no moral truths — that we should simply live for the moment and get whatever we can out of life.  This worldview has led to the chaos we are experiencing.  By contrast, the Christian worldview teaches us to live within our means, defer gratification, and treat others honorably — all requirements for sustaining personal prosperity and the free-market system.

“But free markets can remain free only if individuals behave responsibly and police themselves. We are not doing that today; we have ignored moral restraints, even labeling them intolerant.

“Over the years I have developed a lecture about the inconsistency of teaching ethics at any school which endorses moral relativism.  That’s because the universities are all about diversity and sensitivity, not inculcating character based on moral absolutes. We are now paying the price.

“This financial crisis is in reality a crisis of character. And the taxpayers are stuck with a staggering bill and a shaky economic future.

“We need a complete overhaul of our national priorities. But we Christians have an even bigger job. Unless we can renew in our culture a worldview encouraging virtue and responsibility, the economic maelstrom of the past year will only be a foretaste of things to come.”

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I look forward to seeing you Sunday this year with a Bible, a smile and a positive word. RA

God Works All Things Together

Everything that happens to you is for your own good.  If the waves roll against you, it only speeds your ship toward the port.  If lightning and thunder comes, it clears the atmosphere and promotes your soul’s health.  You gain by loss, you grow healthy in sickness, you live by dying, and you are made rich in losses.

Could you ask for a better promise?  It is better that all things should work for my good than all things should be as I would wish to have them.  All things might work for my pleasure and yet might all work my ruin.  If all things do not always please me, they will always benefit me. 

This is the best promise of this life. (Charles H. Spurgeon as quoted in The Promise)