Mor-on American Idols

This is what the LORD says: Do not learn the way of the nations or be terrified by signs in the heavens, although the nations are terrified by them, for the customs of the people are worthless. Someone cuts down a tree from the forest; it is worked by the hands of a craftsman with a chisel. He decorates it with silver and gold. It is fastened with hammer and nails, so it won’t totter. Like scarecrows in a cucumber patch, their idols cannot speak. They must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them for they can do no harm – and they cannot do any good. – Jeremiah 10:2-5

As I was saying yesterday, everything man builds is systemically top heavy. Man’s creations, if done apart from a recognition of the Absolute, lack a solid foundation. For example, at the moment, I think the stock market P&E ratio is somewhere around 140:1. If you take the smoothed out PE10, it’s still about 19:1 or 20:1. The average on the PE10 is 16.3:1, I think. This means that the market is somewhere between 20% to 700% overvalued. It is out of balance. One reason earnings are holding up as well as they are is because companies have been cutting costs – largely by laying off employees. The massive infusions of government funny money may be helping, too. At some point either real earnings will pick up or the market will collapse, possibly into a PE10 in the single digits – as has happened historically.

With unemployment approaching 10%, I just don’t see how a boost in earnings is possible any time soon. Of course, I am no economist, and I don’t have an MBA, so what do I know. Do not do any investing based on my view of things.

I look back at those idolaters in Jeremiah’s day, and I think how silly they were. Surely no one could take a god seriously that somebody built themselves. Then I look around today at people trying to derive meaning from inanimate objects, from man-made institutions, opinions, substances, people, sports, status symbols, etc. I see it in myself, especially when I look at the things that scare me, the things that I find myself worrying over. It’s really easy to get caught up in the zeitgeist, in the fads and fears that run like a contagion throughout society.

When I see those who appear to be intelligent people talking nonsense, it makes me wonder if I’m the one who doesn’t get it. If I see people clinging to things, how do I know I should not? If lots of people value something, how do I know if they are wrong? How do I know if something is an idol? They must be carried because they cannot walk. An idol is a burden. The real God, of course, is the One who not only is not a burden, He carries us. In True Grit, Rooster speaks of the cat, General Sterling Price, and says that cats really don’t belong to anybody. “’Course,” he adds, “I depend on him.” So, too, with God – He’s my Father, but He can’t belong to me, and thus burden me, in the sense that an idol can. Rather, I belong to Him. And I do depend on Him.

We must be crazy. Why would we fill our lives with dumb things that cannot speak, cannot love us, cannot help us? Why do we allow ourselves to be loaded down like mules with things that a mule, if he were free to choose, would leave behind as worthless? Now, I’m not going to go out and sell everything I’ve got down to my boots and a couple of pairs of jeans, but I am going to work on not letting the empty, the meaningless, and the impotent weary me, intimidate me, or dominate me.