Thoughts for a Black Friday

But godliness with contentment is great gain.

For we brought nothing into this world, and we can take nothing out. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation, a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and by craving it, some have wandered away from the faith.

Now you, man of God, run from these things; but pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.

Fight the good fight for the faith; take hold of eternal life, to which you were called and have made good confession before many witnesses.
1 Timothy 6:6-12

When we begin to see security in gold, or worse, fiat money, we are in grave danger. Certainly there is the spiritual danger that Paul speaks of to Timothy, but also alarming is the danger to liberty.

I just watched President Bush give a news conference and attempt to stabilize the markets with an assurance that no one needs to panic because the federal government is buying up private assets. During the New Deal, FDR’s administration bought hogs and drowned them to try and drive up the market price for farmers. That didn’t work either. The only thing that pulled us out of the Great Depression was World War II. Despite what you might read in the history books, all the efforts by the government only prolonged the agony.

What is being done by the Bush administration and Congress will not bring us out of this crisis. Going farther down the road of socialism under an Obama presidency, or, I fear, even under a McCain administration, will make matters that much worse. The American consumer has been keeping the world afloat since 1980. How long can China and India continue to grow without the flow of dollars? Will socialist Europe’s “planned” economies keep things going?

The world does not think so. All the world markets have followed Wall Street down. There are no celebrations in the streets of Saudi Arabia as crude drops below $80 a barrel. The speculators, unable to finance their futures trading, and in the face of a potential decline in demand, are running from oil. Crude is not far from a 50% drop in two months. Part of the decline is due, not only to a pullback in speculation, but to a strengthening dollar, which seems odd.

Tighter credit, fewer dollars available for a proliferation of goods, results in lower prices – a stronger currency, deflation. This seems like a good thing to me, but then I am sitting on a little cash. If I were in hock up to my elbows, paying out the nose for my Lexus and my granite-countered McMansion, I, too, might be thinking the government should do something. A modest amount of inflation is always good for the debtor since he is paying back a fixed amount with “cheaper” dollars.

In any case, he who dies with the most toys still leaves them behind. “Bury us in the damn garden next to the stupid lion,” so read the will of Hub and Garth in Secondhand Lions, while their yacht floated serenely on the lake. In the end it is not about what we had but whether or not we really lived.

“Take hold of eternal life,” the Apostle said. He could have said, “Take hold of life that is Real.” Eternal life is everlasting, not merely in quantity, but in quality – it is Real and True – truly life everlasting. It is up to us, daily, to make the choice between a derived, imitation life where we seek to be the “envy” of our like-minded neighbor in flatland, or to embrace the Way, the Truth, and the Life by faith in Christ.