RBWords - Volume 21 - Number 9: September 2008
Something to Think About
The “financial crisis” is giving many people something to think about! I don’t pretend to understand all the information that is pouring in from all sides. I do realize that those who put much of their financial resources in the stock market have seen those resources considerably diminished in a single day’s trading! I do realize that those who entrusted their resources to supposedly sound and sane financial institutions are worried that the unwise lending that led to the crisis may cause those institutions to “fail” and endanger their deposits. I do realize that the desire for greater “returns” seems to have clouded the judgment of even some of the “best and the brightest” on Wall Street and elsewhere on the planet. I do realize that a crisis of this dimension in an election year can attract solutions by government that are based less on what is good in the long run than on what will be politically expedient in the short run.
I remember being in Oakland, CA, in October 1989 when the big earthquake occurred. It seemed to me that the ground under my feet would never stop shaking. I suspect that the financial crisis is making many people feel the same kind of queasiness. When such “bedrock” notions as capitalism and free market economy show themselves to be subject to original sin in the form of unwise human decisions, those who put their trust and money on the line begin to wonder if “anything is sacred.” Well, yes, there IS something/someone that is sacred, and it’s not the stock market or the Church of Wall Street! That something sacred is the God who has made us stewards of creation and not squanderers of it! Those who have betrayed the public trust are now in the position of begging the public to give them more money to keep from “failing.” We have to forgive them, but we are not commanded to trust them! I pray for wiser and less greedy heads in finance and in government. I invite you to join me! IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT.
It Has Been Said
“Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.
From the Gospel of Luke 12:16-21