Feast & Famine—The State Cannot Save Us

Famine may be a strong characterization for our time, but as the weeks roll by showing no foreseeable end to this economic downturn, it doesn’t sound so far off. More and more we hear from the news talkers, our neighbors, and our own families about how the government needs to pass a bill or sign a law to turn this thing around. For the Christian nation, however, this can never be the primary answer. The Bible is full of reasons why the state cannot save us. We must think about Biblical answers to this problem. I know that Proverbs has a lot to say about our responsibilities in this life and about how God blesses faithful living and work. Since this wisdom is so abundant, I simply flopped  my wife’s Bible open to early Proverbs where it landed with the open leafs showing 12:13 through 15:14. Her Bible ends Revelation on page 1044. These two pages are two thousandths of that total, but contain enough wisdom to change the world.

The snippet of Scripture at hand tells us that profit comes from labor “The sluggard lusteth, but his soul hath naught: but the soul of the diligent shall have plenty” (13:4) and that “…much increase cometh by the strength of the ox” (14:4), and “In all labor there is abundance: but the talk of the lips bringeth only want” (14:23). It also gives us some wisdom to help us figure out if more borrowing, taxing, and spending are likely to produce greater wealth, saying things like, “wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labor shall increase” (13:11) and “In the house of the righteous is much treasure: but in the revenues of the wicked is trouble” (15:6).

The government tells us that the means of our rescue is for us to borrow and spend. There is constant talk about how consumers (that would be us) need to regain confidence and start buying things. Businesses supposedly need to borrow more, and housing loans need to increase. The president has also told us that higher taxes can be used to increase spending on new programs like health care. Tax, spend, and borrow are the supposed answers to the economic crises. However, God tells us just the opposite. His Word always instructs us to be diligent workers and to save “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children…” (13:22). The long term answer for recovery involves working and saving. We need to save not borrow. Saving creates business capital which is the foundation for all real business growth. If we want to escape the growing and ever-bursting bubbles of what some call the business cycle or maybe just the present trouble, we have to work, save, and invest what we saved. Only then can we have financial success without the deflating (and soon inflating) money/market mess we are experiencing.

Government never was able to save us and cannot now save us. Borrowing, spending, and taxing will not save us. Government has nothing because government produces nothing and therefore cannot spend us into recovery. Printing more dollars does not create any wealth. None of us lacks paper with little pictures of presidents. Every week we trade dollars for carts full of groceries, tanks of gas, and clothes for our kids. The ruin of our currency only hurts us.

The central government and its banks are killing us even as they commit suicide. The banks are in a lot of trouble due to a variety of wicked practices most of which have to do with using their positions to create vast ledger based wealth but no real products or services. Everybody is expanding their portfolio, but nobody is “going to work” so to speak. Banks have used their fractional reserve system to loan and reloan the same money over twenty-five times for every dollar deposited. Many of those funds were reinvested into a vast shadow economy made up of hedge funds, T bills, bonds and other investment tools that were ‘derived’ in ascending layers too complicated for anybody to ever follow. The entire system has been devised to create wealth without laboring. The whole scheme is a confidence game. As long as everybody remains confident the expansion continues. As soon as, or more apropos, when, the public confidence begins to fail, as it inevitably does, then the jig is up. Markets begin to crash, the chips come off the table, and we find out who the losers are. It is most of us. The Federal Reserve bank owners created their reserve notes out of thin air to begin with so they have nothing to lose, and by stealthy chicanery have everything to gain.

So what do we do? Well, we can still try not to borrow and spend. God has always warned us to avoid heavy debt and to work and save. Nothing has changed. We need to obey His wisdom. Beyond this we need to give thanks every day. God has blessed us not just with houses and lands but with eternal life. We have hope, we always have hope, and we have citizenship in a richer nation. We have the bread and the wine of the fellowship of the saints, and we have Jesus. Even if we tumble into poverty, we are rich because we have Jesus.

The worship of money (and its security, buying power, ability to free us from drudgery) is idolatry. The nation needs to repent of this as do we personally. More money will not save us. God will save us. God has saved us. God is saving us. I am calling the collapsing markets ‘The Great Unwinding’. This has been coming for a long time. However, a strong belief in the sovereign rule and grace of God in my life encourages me daily. We need to keep going back to the Scriptures. Pray for the church. We pray daily for the saints we know. Being thankful and doing the right things every day are necessary disciplines for all of us. We have a better ‘reserve note’ reserving a room for us in heaven. May we be ever thankful.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach

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