Value of Gold

I have been thinking about gold this morning. Sometimes we dream about gold, you know, Scrooge McDuck reveling in his warehouse full of gold coins only with our faces instead of his. However, dreaming is dreaming but how often do we think about gold. I mean really considering the nature of this wonderful metal and its rightful place in the created order. I am asking, ‘what does God want us to think about gold’?

 Over the past few days news headlines have been highlighted with reports about the price of gold rising fast. The price flicks upward seemingly with every click back into the charts. Something new is happening and it has caught the attention of people who normally do not pay attention to this (usually) boring commodity. Of course, things are not normal in the economic world so gold making headlines maybe should not be a big surprise.

 I noticed a few years ago that the Bible mentions gold in the first few paragraphs. Moses wrote, (speaking of rivers)‘The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there’- Genesis2:11-12.  From this we can learn that gold was important enough to discuss immediately after the creation account, in fact as a part of that account I would say. Not only that, the mention of gold is positive, asserting that the gold is ‘good’. Hence, the very first discussion of gold in the Bible connects the yellow metal to a moral evaluation whose broad sweeping assessment is that it is good. This all seems rather elementary but God thought it important enough to put it on the page for us. We need to believe that gold is fundamentally a good thing because God said so.

 I also observed that Abram , father of the faith, patriarch who believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, that Abram, is said to have been, ‘very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold’ – Genesis 13:2.  It seems that the Biblical definition of physical wealth always circles around tangible goods, typically with silver and gold being high on the list. This is worth noting because in our time the dominant humanist culture has worked hard to re-define this old construct. They have labored to make us believe that their fiat paper Federal Reserve Notes, and other unbacked securities are superior to gold or silver. Gold and silver are not sophisticated stores of wealth. They do not create huge bubbles that can be ridden to dizzying heights. If you keep it in the wrong place it could be stolen!

 Now, all of a sudden, Gold and silver are roaring back unto the scene. The world markets are informing the population that paper assets are not secure. Almost overnight those supposedly secure investments can be discounted to a position of near worthless. There is fear in the streets. The spark has been lit. Gold is glimmering again as the lies of the age begin to unravel.

 From the earliest creation God made gold and silver as stable stores for wealth. Everyone understands this basic concept almost innately. Central banks rarely ever give up all their gold. In fact while stamping out huge wads of paper ‘currency’ for the proletariat population to use they themselves are checking the security on their iron vaults. They know what is valuable, and it is not big piles of paper.

 One of the interesting things about Christian civilization is that no matter how hard our enemies work at deconstructing it, the created order for all things just keeps coming back. The humanist financial constructions of heavy debt, unbacked paper currency, and the entire edifice of wealth disconnected from the tangible is now teetering all across the western world. As this system tumbles there will, by God’s grace, be wonderful opportunities for Christian men to obey God and reinvent honest money along Biblical lines.

 The secular order is failing. As this unfolds the hearts of men will be failing. For the covenant people it is a time of opportunity to renew and rebuild on Biblical foundations. I believe Christian men are wise to invest something into silver and gold assets partly as a matter of principal and partly as a matter of protection for our families’ welfare. These are perilous times. We ought to believe God concerning the definitions for wealth. Little pieces of paper with pictures on them do not fit those definitions.

 For Christian Culture,

 Don Schanzenbach 8-20-11