Godless Economics

Many of us feel intimidated by any talk about the economy coming out of the popular talking heads, news casters, the pundits, and government high up suits. They blabber snoringly about Quantitative Easing (QE), sales of treasury notes, interest rates from the central banks and endless blah, blah, blah. They are always telling us about how as a nation we need to borrow more money and spend more if we are going to recover from the present malaise. I used to feel like I needed a dictionary when they got going about controlling the rise in interest rates, acceptable rates of inflation, and the M1 money supply. Who can ever keep track of it all? Most of us just flip the channel and figure we will leave it to somebody who cares enough to figure it all out. Maybe they are smart and we are not, who knows?

Yet, our Christian beliefs, our theology, tells us that God is the Maker and Ruler of all things. If this is true (and it is) then we should expect that when He speaks about economics and money that He gets it right. This brings us to my often stated maxim that ‘God is right, God is right about everything’. Sometimes I start with the word ‘suppose’ as in ‘just suppose that God is right, suppose that He is right about everything.’ The point is that if God is the Master of everything, and if He is always right, then we have the best source possible for our economic thought. We do not need to look first to the economists. We need to look first to God and His revealed word for our ideas. Economists and humanist eggheads will not respect our Bible based ideas but we do not care. Why would we? The lost are heading moment by moment for the abyss; we do not need to join them.

Instead of thinking like they think we ought to be formulating our own economic philosophy based on what we find in Scripture. These would be ideas like saving to create economic health (Proverbs 6:6-11), working and giving (Ephesians 4:28), leaving an inheritance to our children (Proverbs 13:22), or just being prospered by God for being righteous (Proverbs 15:6). This is a mere taste of what God offers in the way of His wisdom but it gives a feel for where our economic thought should be going. We have to stop being enthralled by the secular economic talkers and regain a Biblical mindset about money matters. Our nation needs to repent and return to our Founder if we are to have any financial success. We are galloping toward disaster. Now would be a wise time to beg our God to remake us and our society.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach