Silver, Gold, and Suffering

After I picked my son up from football practice yesterday, he asked me how things were.  I let him know that the stock market had dropped 777 points.  “Wow, Mom,” he replied, “that’s God’s number.”  I had to chuckle – at least he’s paid attention to a few things he’s heard me explain – but that’s about the only chuckle I had yesterday.  If God is using this economic crisis to get our attention, he certainly has mine.  I’ve been studying Zephaniah, and his words are reverberating:  “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of Yahweh’s fury.”  (1:18)  It’s a stern warning.  

In the context of the risen Christ, however, it’s not only a call to repentance and reevaluation, it’s also a call to do what we can to alleviate looming human suffering.  I’m deeply concerned about our immediate future, and the failure of our legislature to have acted in our best interest yesterday.  The no-voters are flirting with the disaster of all Americans - and indeed, all citizens of the interconnected world.  Here’s why:

The primary provision of the economic rescue legislation is to permit the government to purchase the written down mortgage assets now creating such weight on bank portfolios.  That’s purchase assets, not hand over cash.  The problem is not that there is no value in the assets, but that it is impossible to determine with accuracy how much value there is.  As mortgages were bundled, sliced, and sold off as CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), they were traded, and when the music stopped, landed as assets on the balance sheets of banks and investment houses many steps removed from the original real estate and the mortgage borrowers that gave rise to them.  The problem now is a combination of uncertainty about their real underlying value and conservative accounting regulations requiring “marking to market.”  Since today’s holders don’t have a quick, reliable way to accurately determine what they’re worth, “market value” is a very low number.  But note:  there are properties and mortgage cash flow behind these assets.  Not knowing what they’re worth is very different from worthlessness.  

So if the government, which won’t be trying to make money on trades as the private sector had been doing, purchases these very marked down mortgages at fire sale prices with tax dollars and holds them, there are plenty of scenarios which have not only most of its investment money coming back, but even a substantial profit if and as the economy settles down.

Why is this necessary for what many believe is properly a free market economy?  That’s for another post – or better – another blog.  The conditions that have given rise to this particular moment are unique, but the problem is that we are here.  As trust evaporates from the financial system, no one is willing to  lend money.  That means businesses can’t get their working capital loans to smooth out cash flow.  That means that educational institutions will not be able to borrow to cover cash flow needs between tuition and gift inflows.  That means that banks can’t do their normal business because they are unwilling to work with one another for fear of another failure.  In short, that means that the economy has seized. 

What are the implications?  It’s like a set of dominoes.  Let’s assume a trucking company is responsible for moving produce from the farms to the local grocery chain.  It gets paid monthly.  The grocer borrows mid cycle to pay the trucker, but this month, it can’t get the working capital loan it always gets because the bank isn’t lending.  The trucking company doesn’t get paid.  It can’t buy gas and give out paychecks, so it lays off drivers, and its business halts.   The produce doesn’t move.  It rots in the warehouse, and the farmers don’t get paid . . . You can see where this is going.  It’s a small example, but when capital can’t move, things collapse in very short order.  It’s the 21st century version of massive destruction. 

This bill is essential for restoring some order to the markets so that they can move.  The more days that go by without a bill, the more urgent the situation will become.

This isn’t about politics and theoretical free markets.  It’s about keeping our country from falling apart to the extent that we could be looking at riots, food shortages, massive unemployment, and a collapse of our savings and investments (which has already begun; $1.2 TRILLION of market capital was wiped out yesterday).  To borrow from Zephaniah again, we ought to be very concerned about our streets being laid to waste. 

I’m a Republican.  I learned yesterday that my Democratic congressman voted for the bill.  For that reason alone, I’m voting for him in November; he gets it.  This goes way beyond the things that concerned me last week.

It is true that silver and gold won’t save us.  As Christians, we must grab hold of the righteousness of Christ, and remember that our trust is not in the assets of this world, but in him.  He and he alone is our salvation.  That said, as those called to speak and work redemptively in a sin-cursed world, doing we must do what we can to head off the kind of suffering we might never have imagined possible. 

 

Death and The Savages

I think the movie The Savages, starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman, exposes our tendency to avoid the reality of death.  Linney and Hoffman play siblings who are forced to take care of their father (who is battling dementia) after his ‘girlfriend’ dies.  Outside of a care facility Hoffman lays into his sister for being so choosy about assisted living centers saying,

“…the landscaping, the neighborhoods of care, they’re not for the residents. They are for the relatives; people like you and me who don’t want to admit what is really going on here. People are dying, Wendy. Right inside that beautiful building, right now, its a f-ing horror show. And all this wellness propaganda and the landscaping is just there to obscure the miserable fact that people die. And death is gaseous and gruesome and its filled with s*** and p*** and rotten stink.”

[This film is a great one for examining the human condition and coping mechanisms and living up to expectations, etc.]

 

The Best Blog Conversation on Denominational Renewal in the PCA – Glenn Lucke’s hosting it.

I realize that not all the Conn-versation authors are in the PCA but I wanted to direct attention to what I believe is a very well put together discussion around last years Denominational Renewal Conference for the PCA (it was not an official conference but a few hundred pastors and seminarians turned out). Here’s the links and the schedule for the next five weeks;

CGO Forum on Denominational Renewal Conference

Sept. 15-Oct.17

The structure is as follows:

Mondays- Simpatico response

Tuesdays- Critical response

Wednesdays- Women or minority voices in the PCA response

Thursdays- Outside of the PCA response

Fridays- Original speaker of the talk at Denominational Renewal responds to the respondents

 

Margaret Feinberg and Voddie Baucham on Sarah Palin and female leadership in the public square

This interview has been floating around the web in several forums from Crossway’s Book Blog site to personal blog sites of a political nature, etc.. I had some pretty strong thoughts regarding the interview as I watched it and I wanted to bring here for conversation.

Thoughts, criticisms, reflections…

 

My Name Is Mark, I’m an Evangelical Christian, And I Will Vote for Barack Obama

Evangelicals are back in the media spotlight again, but the spotlight has gone from red to purple. Back in the 1970s, largely energized by Roe v. Wade, Evangelicals asserted themselves into the political process as never before. Though it is debated how much real influence they had even then and on into the 80s, on one thing all agreed: the Evangelical vote could be counted on by the Republican party. So after 30-some years, why would the Evangelical voter be back in the news? The “man bites dog” story for 2008 is that for an increasing number of (particularly, but not exclusively) young Christians, Evangelical Democrat is no longer an oxymoron.

This is where it gets personal: ten years ago I would not have been able to get my mouth to form the word “Democrat,” and now I are one.

Well, maybe I’m not a Democrat, insofar as I’m not thrilled about accepting any political party into my heart. As a matter of fact, I sat out the previous election, my discouraged heart filled with pox for both houses. All that changed when Barack Obama burst out of East Nowhere, Illinois, and onto the national stage. I’ll admit it; I was smitten from the get-go. (Please don’t send me your YouTube links to the Obama as Paris Hilton ads, I get the wierdness, thanks.) But after my honeymoon was over, I found myself still just as enthusiastic.

I can easily tell you the basic reasons why, and let me save you the effort of typing out the obvious critiques: my reasons don’t go very high up the policy-wonkometer. In the first draft of this post, I actually spelled them out. But then I deleted them, because I don’t want whatever discussion this post begins to be Topic: Obama, messiah or antichrist.

Here’s what I would like to discuss with my fellow Conn-versation bloggers and all you gentle readers. Not why or why not Obama or McCain is the best candidate, but the far more interesting (to me, anyway) question of can one be a true Evangelical in all the usual earmarks (Deity of Christ, salvation by faith in him alone, Bible is the Word of God, etc.) and vote for Obama? And to get the 50,000 pound elephant out into the open, what about the Big A, abortion? For those of you who oppose Obama, is that the biggest reason why? For those who, like me, plan to vote for Obama, how do you “handle” the abortion question when it comes up? Is that the make-or-break issue for Evangelical Christians? Should it be?

 

Quitting Church?

Just as I was ready to recycle yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, I took a quick flip through to make sure I hadn’t missed anything interesting.  Glad I did!  Yesterday’s edition featured an interesting book review of Julia Duin’s new book Quitting Church.  Duin, the religion reporter for the Washington Times, analyzes what she characterizes as an epidemic in church-quitting among evangelicals.

Her thesis struck a chord.  I’ve already done this once, may yet again, and all of my reasons were among those reported in the WSJ review.  She discusses lack of community; insipid teaching; failure to reach the souls of the suffering; emphasis on families over singles; and inefficient leadership models.  Her two biggies, however, are problems with pastors and the sidelining of women.  Pastors who are out of touch, or personally unhappy, or fail to shepherd, or caught in scandal, or high-handedly controlling are a major reason people move on.  She goes on to note that women leave because they are underutilized in their churches.  Duin speaks from experience as an “unwanted woman.”  She holds a Masters in Religion from Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. 

Duin’s book points up the neglected need in all churches to monitor and take to heart the back door problem.  I can’t tell you the number of public and private meetings in which I’ve participated over the years that only address growth questions from the front door – how many people have we added?  The number of new members and attenders is of no value unless it is presented along with the loss of members and attenders.  The second number is usually more important than the first.  Why do people who have spent time in your church, gotten to know you, and likely made a commitment of time, talent, and treasure leave?  By the time they’re gone, it’s probably too late, but few people who have committed at any level leave all at once unless it’s related to a move.  First, they slow down or stop giving.  Then, their attendance gets infrequent as they shop around.  Only once they find another home do they withdraw altogether. 

Church leaders who don’t monitor their attendance, and who fail to follow up on those in the process of quitting and who have left are missing a major source of insight as they try to figure out how to minister well in the place that God has put them.

 

You probably didn’t see this one coming . . .

This isn’t a political blog, but Art’s 8-19-08 post got us thinking about how Christians might work through their faith in deciding how to vote.  Yesterday, the choice before us suddenly got more interesting.   

I surely didn’t see Gov. Sarah Palin coming, although my high school aged son, who has been intently interested in the VP selection process for months, had her as one of his top three picks for McCain.  He had put her on my radar screen, but all that accomplished was to leave me impressed with the depth of his research.  Who knew? 

Gov. Palin’s CV is packed with broad experience  - chief executive; business person; whistle-blower; energy expert; tax cutter; mother of soldier, daughters, and special needs baby; outdoorsman; former union member and wife of union member; total commitment to life . . . the number of competing constituencies to whom she might appeal is staggering. 

I found her speaking style to be both bold and warm.  Although she is low key about her faith, Gov. Palin used the phrase “servant’s heart” in her Dayton speech, and it felt authentic. 

Not everyone is thrilled with Gov. Palin, of course.  She’s perceived as too unknown and too light to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.  Her experience has been ridiculed as having played out in too small an arena.  The pro-choicers are unhappy.  The patriarchal men are unhappy.  Some die-hard Clinton supporters are outraged that McCain seems to think that any woman will do to attract their vote. 

I don’t automatically cast my vote for Christians, and I won’t automatically cast my vote for a woman.  But I have to say that I have experienced the kind of reaction that so many African Americans have shared since Obama became the Democratic candidate.  There is something viscerally right about finally seeing someone who’s, as I said to a friend in the grocery store yesterday, “one of us,” in the last leg of the race.

Over to you.  How do you receive McCain’s selection?  Do her credentials bring elements of social justice to the Republican ticket?  Does the Vice Presidential candidate make a difference?

 

Do “Texts” Control Their Own Interpretation?

I greatly enjoy studying how we understand things—whether texts, another person in conversation, etc. I thought I would share some thoughts about such understanding-theory (hermeneutics, if you will), specifically focused on texts and meaning. Does a text control its own interpretation?

 

A Parable from Art Boulet about Our Current ‘Debates’ about the Bible

I want to call everyone’s attention to a fascinating and helpful Parable, of sorts, Art Boulet posted on his blog the other day: dark caves and differing perspectives.

 

Was Paul a Misogynist? Some Thoughts from Daniel Kirk

Daniel Kirk, Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, has posted some thoughts on whether or not Paul was a misogynist. I commend his reflections to all, even those who may disagree with him. I especially appreciate him framing his comments by questions of what the Bible is, what we should expect from it, and how we live out its authority. What does everyone think?