Will Washington Do Away with the Notion of "Too Big To Fail"?

In August, during an extraordinary appearance at the regional Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City, Fed Chair spoke of the need to get past the time when any corporation is "too big to fail."

A few months ago, with memories of last year's financial meltdown fresh, that sentiment might have been as popular and unquestioned as love for sunshine and motherhood. But, having dodged a depression and with signs of improvement in the economy, support for new regulations that would allow large corporations to fail, Washington seems to be intent on doing nothing, meaning that corporate America, particularly investment firms and lenders, think that they can resume the same reckless practices that led to the September 2008 meltdown.

Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker has made comments indicating that if Americans are concerned about this, the concern is warranted.

Calculated Risk quotes Volcker's cautionary note. Read the whole thing.

Here is the Bernanke interview. It was extremely impressive.

Help for Tough Economic Times

The weekly online edition of The Lutheran magazine has just published a distilled version of a series of blog posts on coping with the current economic down times, here. I hope that people find it helpful and that God is glorified through it.

Here you'll find links to all five installments of the original series.

"Every one of them words rang true..."

"...And glowed like burnin' coal
Pourin' off of every page
Like it was written in my soul..."

I thought of those words from the Bob Dylan song, Tangled Up in Blue, when I read Psalm 62, for my morning devotions. This psalm, with its reminder of the fleeting nature of life on earth and its determined reliance on the only true, eternal foundation for life, God, seems like the perfect message for us in this time of financial crisis and anxiety, an antidote that both chastens and comforts us for our reliance on anything but God.

Here it is...

Psalm 62

For God alone my soul waits in silence;
from him comes my salvation.
²He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall never be shaken.

How long will you assail a person,
will you batter your victim, all of you,
as you would a leaning wall, a tottering fence?
⁴Their only plan is to bring down a person of prominence.
They take pleasure in falsehood;
they bless with their mouths,
but inwardly they curse.

For God alone my soul waits in silence,
for my hope is from him.
⁶He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
⁷On God rests my deliverance and my honour;
my mighty rock, my refuge is in God.

⁸Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before him;
God is a refuge for us.

Those of low estate are but a breath,
those of high estate are a delusion;
in the balances they go up;
they are together lighter than a breath.
¹⁰Put no confidence in extortion,
and set no vain hopes on robbery;
if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.

¹¹Once God has spoken;
twice have I heard this:
that power belongs to God,
¹² and steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord.
For you repay to all
according to their work.

Rejoice. Pray. Thank.

[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

First Thessalonians 5:16-24
You don’t need for me to tell you this morning that these are tough economic times.

About a million-and-a-half Americans have lost their jobs since the beginning of the year. Some of them are members of Saint Matthew.

Two of the country’s Big Three automakers are saying they could go out of business soon without a bailout.

State governments, like our own in Ohio, are putting together contingency plans in case projected revenue shortfalls resulting from people making less and paying less in income and sales taxes. If the cuts have to go into effect, it may mean fewer services for some people at the very times they most need them.

Retirees and workers alike are watching the values of their pension funds decrease. (I checked my own pension account while preparing this sermon and found that it's lost one-third of its total value since the beginning of this year. Well, I don’t want to exaggerate; it’s actually only lost 32.9% of its value.)

How do we Christians, people who believe in a loving God Who cares about our every moment, people who believe in a God Who came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, and people who trust in a Savior Who promises to come again--how do we--deal with the grim realities of life? And not just grim economic realities, but all of life’s grim realities?

The people of the first-century church in the Roman colony of Thessalonica had similar questions. And for good reason.

Thessalonica, a city that set on the Aegean Sea in the northeast of the Greek peninsula, in the province of Thessaly, next to Macedonia, owed its existence and its fortunes to the Roman Empire. It was a key stop on a major trade route that connected Europe and Asia. Most of the people who lived in Thessalonica were economically well off, in no apparent need of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ when they first heard of Jesus.

Yet about three years before Paul wrote the words in our second lesson for this morning, in the summer of 50A.D., a few Thessalonians dared to confess that their hope wasn’t in the Empire or the emperor or their money, homes, or possessions, but in Jesus Christ alone.

In the intervening time, the Thessalonian church had been subjected to opposition from the local synagogue and Roman officials. They had suffered economic pressures, persecutions, and beatings. Members who had believed that Jesus' return to the world and the Day of the Lord were imminent, had died, leaving survivors wondering where Jesus was and what had happened to those who had died believing.

To help the Thessalonians cope with their circumstances and to prepare for Christ’s intervention in their lives, Paul gives the Thessalonian church--and us--two sets of three imperatives on how best to await Christ’s coming to us. The first set is short and sweet:

• Rejoice always;
• pray without ceasing; and
• give thanks in all circumstances.

This morning, I want to assure you that as followers of Jesus Christ, we can rejoice, pray incessantly, and give thanks in all circumstances.

In fact, to be ready for Christ’s return or for the moments when we meet Him at the ends of our lives, adopting Paul’s three imperatives is essential.

Through them, God answers the prayer Paul mentions in our lesson, a prayer he offered not just for the Thessalonians, but for all followers of Jesus, including you and me: that God would sanctify us, make us holy, make us more like Jesus, more like the people we were made and redeemed to be.

We can rejoice. Last weekend, I heard a sermon by Bill Hybels, founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Illinois. He talked about things he’d learned from God in previous economic downturns. One of the lessons he mentioned happened in 1982, during our last major recession.

Three years before, he had founded the Willow Creek congregation. It was still meeting in a movie theater. He and his wife were struggling with their personal finances and saw it as a great personal turning point: They were able to put away $1000 in their savings account.

They were savoring the knowledge that their adoption of the Christian discipline of thriftiness had led to their achievement when an elderly man who was part of the church approached Hybels. This man was living in a condominium and would soon be turned out. All of his investments were either tied up or had gone south in the recession. He’d also accumulated uncovered medical bills and simply didn’t have the money to pay his mortgage. “Does the church have the money to cover what he owed, a thousand dollars?” he wondered.

Hybels explained that the congregation was in the process of paying down the land on which its first unit was to be built and was barely covering its expenses as it was. The man said, “I understand. I was just wondering.”

On his drive home, Hybels had a thought: What if he and his wife Lynne just gave this man the thousand dollars he needed? He stewed about how he could share this proposal with his wife. But when he explained it to her, she said, “Bill, that’s a no-brainer. Of course, we can give him the thousand dollars. That’s probably why God gave us the money in the first place.”

So, that’s what they did. The thousand dollars allowed the man to stay in his condo, helping to ease him through the recession.

Months later, that same man approached Hybels again, this time offering to begin repaying him in installments. Hybels immediately refused the offer. You can’t put a price tag on the good things God taught him and his wife from the experience. They had learned to rely on God completely, not on money; that every good and perfect gift comes from God; and that God gives to us so that we can give to others. Above all, maybe, they experienced the joy that belongs to people who are living in sync with God’s will for their lives. If we’re walking with the God we know in Jesus Christ we can rejoice no matter what our financial situation.

We can also pray in all circumstances. George Mueller was a pastor and social reformer in nineteenth century England, a time and place where the poor had it particularly rough. If you were indebted and couldn’t pay your bills, you were thrown into prison. Disease and alcoholism and abandoned children were everywhere. Most of Dickens' novels convey something of what that era was like. It was a tough time!

After his conversion to Christian faith at the age of twenty, George Mueller became a pastor and moved to the city of Bristol. The small church he pastored grew over the course of his lifetime and starting with just a few pennies, he founded an orphanage for which, before his death, he had raised the equivalent of about $7.5-million.

Mueller was a hard working person of action, but he was also a man who spent hours praying. Everything he did was built on the foundation of waiting for God's direction through seasons of prayer.

His diaries record that in November, 1844, he began praying that five different young men, children of friends, would come to faith in Christ. He prayed for them every single day, no matter where he was and no matter how he felt. Eighteen months after he began these prayers, one of the young men came to faith. He thanked God and kept praying for the other four. Five years later, the second one came to faith. Mueller thanked God and prayed for the other three. Six years later, the third one came to faith. One year after Mueller died, fifty-three years after he began praying for those five young men daily, the last two surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ.

I’ve had similar experiences with prayer. One that especially stands out, which I’ve shared with many of you before, involved a source of real, deep personal anguish for me. I prayed about this issue every day for thirteen years, sometimes wondering if God was telling me my concern weren’t really important. I had just about given up on praying about this item, when God answered my prayer suddenly and more wonderfully than I could have ever imagined. I want to urge you today: even in the tough times, even when your hope is running out, pray without ceasing.

Finally, give thanks in all circumstances. It was Advent, days before Christmas, when I got the telephone call informing me that Margie, who had suffered a long time from a debilitating disease, had passed away. I had visited with Margie and her husband hours before she died.

During that visit, her husband Carl told me, “Advent has always been Margie’s favorite time of year.” He explained that Margie loved everything about the Christmas season. But she also loved remembering that some day, whether at the end of her own life or the end of the world, Jesus would come to her and take her to be with Him forever. “Maybe, this Advent will be Margie’s Advent,” Carl had said.

I rushed back to the nursing home. “It is her Advent,” Carl told me as I walked into Margie’s room. And then, Carl and I gave thanks, not that Margie had suffered and died, but that Christ had come to her and taken her home. That experience underscored for me that we can give thanks, not for all, but in all circumstances. Carl taught me that even when times are tough, Christ is still with us and we still have blessings that deserve our thankfulness.

If I had to summarize the three imperatives in our second lesson today, it would be simply: When tough times come, hang in there with God.

We can do that because God has demonstrated His love and concern for us in the baby born in a cattle stall, Who died and rose for us.

This Savior is returning. In the meantime, we hang in there by rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks to God for our lives, our salvation, our hope, our purpose, for the joy of Christmas, for the love of Good Friday, for the promise of Easter, for the presence of Christ with us always, and all of our blessings in this world and the next.

When we hang in there with the God we know through Jesus Christ, we’re ready to welcome Jesus whenever He comes to us. We can join in the ancient prayer of the Church, "Amen! Come, Lord Jesus."

The Citigroup Bailout and the Opportunites to Change America for the Better

[UPDATE: Please note that I neither endorse nor condemn the Citi bailout here, only comment on the opportunities presented by the financial crisis we now face.]

My grandfather, a small business entrepreneur, used to say, "Borrow a thousand dollars from the bank and the bank owns you; borrow a hundred thousand from the bank and you own the bank."

The times were simpler then. But if you add a few zeroes, as represented in the sometimes shaky yet astronomical loans made by major US lending houses over the past decade-and-a-half, you get some sense of why after lengthy, tense negotiations, the US Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the FDIC agreed to bailout troubled banking giant Citigroup late on Sunday. In a phrase that seems to be gaining currency, whether applied to Citigroup or by some, to Detroit's Big Three automakers, this company was too large to be allowed to die.

CNN explains how the bailout is to work:

The plan has two key features:

First, the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will backstop some losses against more than $300 billion in troubled assets.

Second, the Treasury will make a fresh $20 billion investment in the bank. The government has already injected $25 billion into Citigroup as part of the $700 billion bailout passed by Congress in October.

In return for the latest intervention, the government will receive an additional batch of preferred shares - $20 billion for its direct investment and $7 billion as compensation for the loan guarantees. Citigroup will pay an 8% dividend rate on those shares.

The government will impose other restrictions as well. Citigroup will be prohibited from paying out a dividend of more than a penny per share and will face limits on executive compensation. Plus, it will be expected to adjust mortgages for troubled borrowers, according to procedures outlined by the FDIC.

Iceland Raises Prime Interest Rate to 18%

So what? It's seen as an indication that the nation, the economy of which is in something of a freefall, has negotiated a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), often accused of making steep demands on client nations.

If the move and IMF loan can arrest Iceland's decline, that's good.

My apprehension has been that Iceland would go through with loans for which it was negotiating with Russia.

The last thing we want to see happen right now is for nations to become beholden to either Russia or China. The governments of both of those countries can be expected to attempt leveraging loan agreements for strategic advantage, destructive of the interests of both the international community and of their own peoples.

10 Good Things Happening in the Current Economic Downturn

From Kiplinger's. I thought that this was clever.

What Money Can't Buy

From my colleague and friend, Pastor Glen VanderKloot...

WELCOME to the daily issue of ONLINE WITH FAITH.
ONLINE WITH FAITH is a ministry of Faith Lutheran Church,
2313 Whittier Avenue, Springfield, IL, 62704, Glen VanderKloot,
Pastor.

We encourage you to worship and be involved in a local congregation.

If you have any questions, comments, or prayer
requests please be in touch with us at
pastor@faithlutheran.com
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

A Thought for the Day

Money can buy a house, but not a home.

Money can buy a bed, but not sleep.

Money can buy a wedding ring, but not love.

Money can buy a clock, but not time.

Money can buy an education, but not wisdom.

Money can buy jewelry, but not beauty.

Money can buy insurance, but not safety.

Money can buy a crucifix, but not a Savior.


+++++++++

Scripture:

Ecclesiastes 5:10 NLT

Those who love money will never have enough.
How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness!

Prayer:

Lord, thanks for reminding me that money is not the answer. Amen

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

To subscribe to Glen's daily inspirations, send an email to olwf1@gliq.net and put SUBSCRIBE on the subject line.

The Opportunity in the Financial Crisis

"If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

The words come from the first century preacher and evangelist Paul and were originally addressed to a band of Christian believers in the Greek city of Corinth. Some of them evidently, were saying that Jesus' resurrection wasn't real. They treated the Easter story like a myth that anesthetized them from dealing with reality, bringing them happy religious feelings.

Paul gave them a reality check, though. He reminded them that Jesus' resurrection was no myth:
⁴⁵⁶

...I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time...(1 Corinthians 12:3-6a)

Christian hope is rooted in an historical event on which otherwise undistinguished and less than courageous people staked their lives.

Not only is Christ's resurrection an historic fact, its significance goes beyond this life alone. Christ doesn't promise us easy lives. But He promises that those who build their lives on Him will be with Him for eternity.

This is important for us to remember in the current financial crisis and economic uncertainty.

The prime reason for this crisis is that people have staked too much hope in the finite rewards of the world. Our hopes have to go beyond this world.

Jesus once told a parable that bears looking at these days:
^161718192021

“Take care! 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.” (Luke 12:15-21)

For too long, we Americans particularly, have been, in Jesus' phrase, "fools." What do we win when we make financial success the object, the god, of our existences? Some comfort in this life. But the god of material comfort will bring us no comfort--and no life--in eternity. In the end, it's dumb to invest our biggest hopes in something guaranteed to stop paying dividends, which is what money does at the moments we die.

Actually, as I consider the financial crisis, I see great opportunity in it, opportunity for transforming us from a voraciously consuming society into something different, better. I'm excited by what it might teach all of us and how it might change us. My thoughts dovetail with those of Methodist bishop William Willimon, who recently wrote to members of his Alabama conference of congregations:

John Wesley famously said that the “people called Methodists” should “make all you can, save all you can, give all you can,” with the emphasis decidedly on the third part of that exhortation. Early Methodists dressed simply and lived simply. They founded societies for thrift, not in order to hoard but in order to give.

In a new book, The Decline of Thrift in America, historian David Tucker notes that throughout much of American history we saved up to 15% of our income. Thrift was an all-American virtue. Since the 90’s as credit got easy and borrowing became a way of life, there was a dramatic change. The average American now owes more credit card debt than at any time in history.

After one of the most tragic days in U.S. history, how did the President urge us to deal with our grief? “Go shopping.” Spending had replaced thrift as the chief American virtue. Those who had accumulated wealth for themselves and their families were lauded as representatives of the “American dream.” Our biggest trade deficits in history, along with unfunded spending on multiple wars are now bearing their bitter fruit. Reports from many of our pastors suggest that we are moving into a time of very painful recession.

Perhaps now is a good time to recover some Christian virtues that we thought we had outgrown. I pray that we will be given new moral direction that will point us back (or is it forward?) to...Christian values, like thrift. Times of financial crisis are good times to be reminded of what’s really valuable, from a Christian point of view.

I liken the credit binging that precipitated the current financial crisis to addiction. The whole economy became addicted to easy credit based on the chimera of ever-increasing real estate values.

Now, the whole economy is in detox. It's painful. Hopefully, it won't create innocent victims.

In the end though, we may learn the virtues of saving, thriftiness, appropriate spending, and sharing from this financial crisis.

It may also alert us, both those who already confess Christ and those who don't yet do so, of our common need of, as the Twelve Step movements put it, our "higher power."

Jesus Christ is the Lord Who has conquered our sin and conquered death and is able, because He has "in fact" risen from the dead, to give us a hope unaffected by the collapse of banking firms, the tightening of credit, or the decrease of inflated real estate values.

In this life, we have the promise that God stands by us. But our hope goes beyond this life, to a resurrection that all who believe in Jesus Christ will share.

Money is a necessity today. It need not be our god. In fact, it must not be. We can invest our hope elsewhere. When we put our hopes in Christ, the dividends will never stop paying off!

Links to All Five Installments of 'Financial Crisis from One Christian's Perspective'

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The Financial Crisis from One Christian's Perspective (Part 5)

I want to close this series with a few brief, but I think, important points.

First: Let's not lose our heads. A CNN poll of Americans conducted on October 4 and 5, indicated that 60% of the adult population thought that the country was at least somewhat likely to slide into a depression. This is, quite frankly, an example of "chicken littleism." As the CNN article that revealed the poll results noted:

...economists, even many who feel current economic risks are dire, generally don't believe another depression is likely.

"We've been in a recession all year and it's going to get worse," said Anirvan Banerji, director of research for the Economic Cycle Research Institute. "We're going from a relatively mild recession to a more painful recession. But we're a long, long way from a depression."

A survey taken last week by the National Association of Business Economists asked members what would happen if the $700 billion bailout that passed Friday fails to fix frozen credit markets. The consensus forecast of those economists was that, even if continued problems choke off credit to businesses and consumers, unemployment would rise to just 7% in the second quarter of next year .

Other economists recently contacted by CNNMoney.com said that the unemployment rate could rise as high as 10% to 12% next year if the bailout does not work. While that could be roughly double the current 6.1% unemployment rate, it would be only half of the worst rate seen in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

None of this should be seen as belittling the plight of those who are without work, in danger of losing their work, looking at possible foreclosure, or experiencing the loss of pension value, especially people already retired possessing no way to replenish portions of their losses by generating work income.

But the financial crisis is unlikely to lead to the kinds of long-term financial hardships that came to this country and the rest of the world in 1929.

Even if it does, though, God is still God. Psalm 46, in the Bible's Old Testament, inspired Martin Luther, who lived for decades under the threat of execution on sight, to compose one of the greatest Christian hymns, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. The psalm begins with a statement of faith:

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

²Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;

³though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult...

In the intervening centuries, the God Who revealed Himself to a chosen people, Israel, came into the world to extend and expand His rule of love over more than just a single people. In Jesus Christ, God offers forgiveness of sin and new and everlasting life to all who dare to believe in Him.

No matter how dark and difficult life can be, we have the promise of Christ's presence today and the hope of an endless future with God. As the apostle Paul, no stranger to tough times, writes in the New Testament portion of the Bible:
³²³⁹³⁹

If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?... I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39)

The God Who voluntarily became human in order to be one with us in living and dying so that all with faith in Him can be one with Him in His rising is not going to abandon us because the Dow has gone down and the economy needs to be shored up.

Keep your dobber up. God is still God. God still cares about you. God will not abandon you. Even if we lose everything--and the value of my pension's investments have dropped by deep-double-digit amounts since the beginning of this quarter, those who rely on God won't lose what is most important: life through Jesus Christ!

Second: Now is the time to put our faith into action. The New Testament book of James, written by one of Jesus' earthly brothers, is a call to Christians to do more than talk about their faith in Jesus, to trust that the Savior Who gave His life for us will support us as we give our lives in service and love to God and neighbor. James upbraided those Christians who seemed to be concerned for those who are deprived, but did nothing about that concern:
¹⁶

If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? (James 2:15-16)

Admittedly, James is here referring to the care of Christians for each other. But Jesus makes it clear that love of others is to include more than just those who share our faith.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus demonstrates that a neighbor is anyone who has a need. Jesus doesn't expect us to do more than we can do, but He doesn't want us to do less than we can do either.

In His parable, Jesus talks about three men, each of whom had the chance to give relief and help to the victim of a mugging. Two "religious" people passed the man by. A third, member of an ethnic group hated by Jesus' fellow Jews, helped the man.

In this financial crisis, help whoever you can whenever you can, even if the help you can provide and the help that's needed is just giving a listening ear or a promise of prayer. Many of us will likely be able to do more than that.

And this brings me to my final point: Don't underestimate what you can do. Or more accurately, don't underestimate what God can do through you, if you're willing.

Last night, at our congregation's church council meeting, we read Mark 6:34-44. It presents one of the New Testament's four different narratives of a famous incident in Jesus' earthly ministry: the feeding of the 5000.

What's so interesting about this text is that after Jesus tells His disciples to feed the rudderless, hungry people around them and they protest they don't have 200 denarii* to get the food needed to feed this brood, Jesus tells them to do an inventory. "How many loaves have you?" He asks. "Go and see." They soon report back, "Five and two fish." Jesus miraculously stretches these meager supplies into enough to feed everybody there...with plenty left over.

The point: Give God what you have and God will make more of it. If you have a genuine desire to love God and love neighbor and are willing to stand under Christ's authority, you can bring real help to your neighbor, whether the need is spiritual, emotional, physical, or financial.**

The motto of the state in which I live, a place hard-hit by current economic conditions, Ohio, comes from words spoken by Jesus: With God all things are possible.

I believe that. You can too.

*A single denarius was a day's pay for a common laborer.

**This idea is developed in a book called The Great Permission. It's called a field guide for congregations on using asset based planning. Asset based planning, in the Christian context, is refusing to base planning on needs, but based on what we have and how, if we submit them to God's purposes, God can use them.

[UPDATE: When I realized what was the substance of this post by my blogging friend, John Schroeder, I waited to read it. I didn't want to plagiarize the piece! Its substance was clear from its title: BE CONFIDENT! I knew that his subject there would be a topic I would address in this final installment. I just read John's piece this morning after having written my post here last night. I highly recommend that you go read John's post right now.]

Our Great Philadelphia Adventure (Part 3)

Funny moments and other stuff...

During the tour of Independence Hall, our guide, an informative and enthusiastic National Park Service ranger, pointed out that in that place in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence, and in 1787, with the Constitution, men from different backgrounds who had little previous experience with one another, found ways to compromise and iron things out to form and perfect a nation. A man called out from the crowd, "Do you think that we could get those guys back here today?"

During a bus tour of the city, we passed an anti-war demonstration. One protester, hat firmly pushed down overhead, bandanna tied to conceal face, held a sign that asked, "I want Congress to bail me out of my student loans."

There was a mix-up on the charge for our room at the hotel where we stayed. The clerk on duty took care of things. I noticed that he had a Phillies shirt, reflecting the excitement we saw in everyone there about the National League playoff series beginning the night of our arrival. I told him that, as a fan of the Cincinnati Reds, which hasn't won a World Series since 1990 and has pretty much lived in the cellar for the past two decades, I envied his excitement. It was pointed out to me that though the guy had worked miracles with our bill, he could do nothing about the Reds!

Philadelphia has one of the most vibrant central cities I've ever seen. On Friday, we were baffled to see so many cars leaving downtown as we breezed along on the Interstate to Independence Park at the center of town. We later found out that more people commute from the central city to the 'burbs in Philly than in any other town in the country. As we walked around the central city exploring, we saw tons of downtown area housing, something that's virtually non-existent in other big US cities. We also met people who live downtown and work downtown, enabling them to walk and bike to work each day.

Of course, it isn't all nirvana, either. We decided to take a surface road, Ridge Avenue, from downtown to our hotel in Plymouth Meeting, a suburb. Poverty is much in evidence. Jesus did say that the poor would always be with us. But He didn't say that to excuse inaction or indifference in the face of poverty. Widespread poverty in places like Philadelphia, the birthplace of the American experiment, should always be unacceptable to us, whatever our party. We can do better!

One bright spot of this part of our tour: There was a gas war happening in Roxbourough, initiated by the owner of a newly-reopened filling station. We found gas for $3.05 a gallon! (Today somewhere in Pennsylvania, we found it for $2.99 a gallon, all of which is reflective of the recent decrease in gas prices generally.)

A bright spot of the entire trip: In spite of the recent financial crisis, all the restaurants we visited were packed and travel on the Interstate and state routes was brisk. A major freight carrier had a huge banner in front of its corporate offices so that travelers on the Interstate could see. The banner announced that the company's employees had just received the largest pay increase in company history.

The Financial Crisis from One Christian's Perspective (Part 4)

The recent public displays of outrage by some members of Congress, people who both knew about the dangerous, deceptive, and greedy practices of the mortgage lenders and investment banking firms and encouraged them, may be imbued with the moral purity of Claude Rains, who, in the film, Casablanca, closed down Rick's Cafe Americain, where he did his gambling because he was "shocked, shocked" to learn that gambling was going on.

But grandstanding or no, House Government Oversight and Reform chair Henry Waxman stood in for millions of Americans the other day when he doggedly questioned the CEO of now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld. Whether between 2000 and 2008, Fuld pocketed the $480-million claimed by Waxman or the $250-million claimed by Fuld, the guy raked in a lot of cash from a company he was apparently steering toward oblivion.



Is it fair that while thousands lost their jobs, thousands more lost their shirts, and the whole country was thrown into a financial crisis, people like Richard Fuld make off with millions?

Is it fair that a company that got bailed out last week had the gall to spend millions to take its execs to a spa?

Clearly, the answer to both of those questions is, "No."

But what makes us say that?

The Bible is quite clear in saying that God commands honesty and fair dealings of those who do business. It condemns usury, the levying of steep and imprisoning interest rates by those who make loans, like those charged by today's pay day lenders. It commends forthrightness in weights and measures, what we would call "truth in advertising."

When God came into the world in the person of Jesus, He dramatically underscored God's command for honesty in matters financial, as well as God's condemnation of greediness in business dealings, when He "cleansed" the temple in Jerusalem.

You may remember that Jesus entered the temple, the center of Jewish religious life and the place that the presence of God was said to dwell, and turned over the tables of the "moneychangers." He let loose the animals they were selling for use as sacrifices there.

Who were the moneychangers? They were unscrupulous business people who conspired with the temple authorities on a moneymaking scheme that preyed on people's piety and trust.

To the temple, you know, pious Jews came to offer sacrifices to God. The wealthiest could afford to sacrifice lambs. Poorer worshipers could offer birds and the poorer still were allowed to make cereal offerings. Lambs, doves, and cereal were all to be purchased from vendors in the temple courtyards. But they could only be purchased with temple currency.

And how did the faithful get that? They got it by exchanging their currency from the "real world" with the moneychangers, also in the temple courtyard. They charged exorbitant fees for the temple money. Along with the temple priests and elders, the moneychangers got very wealthy with this scam, while the true believers who lived in occupied Judea struggled to get by.

By His "temple tantrum," Jesus condemned these practices and most people who read about it today will say, "Right on!" But why do the preponderance of people who read about and have Jesus' action explained to them side with Him?

Simply put, the Biblical laws commending honesty and fair play and the Scriptural passages that condemn fraud and gouging, are written on our hearts. Theists and non-theists, irrespective of the wide variations in their specific codes of morality, seem, instinctively to know and broadly agree on what might be called the basics of financial fair play.

This is why those who say that you can't legislate morality are wrong. Of course you can legislate morality. In fact, when government is operating with something like integrity--or as close as any of us is capable of operating with integrity, all it ever does is legislate morality.

Take something as innocuous as speed limits or traffic lights on our highways. Why do governments impose them? Speed limits exist because, as part of our common morality, we value life. We want to ensure safety. We have traffic lights and STOP and YIELD signs for the same reason.

We live in a pluralistic society, not a theocracy. Yet our laws usually reflect a moral consensus, a common appropriation of the moral standards I believe that God has imprinted on every one of us, applied to particular times and places by people trying to live and work together.

Of course, there are lots of times when governments behave immorally. (That's to be expected of human beings.) But, interestingly, when governments misbehave, pass immoral laws, or administer immoral policies, they seem never to say, "There's no such thing as moral right." Instead--whether it's a legislator on the take caught on videotape claiming that he only appears to be doing something wrong or a dictator perpetrating a holocaust, the wrongdoers try to twist our common moral standards, portraying themselves as being in the right.

But, in the end, we don't buy it.

And it isn't just the actions of government that are viewed through the prisms of our common moral awareness. Our inborn sense of fairness can also be stirred by the actions of others. (Though it should be said that, given our common human weaknesses, we're generally quicker to see others' faults and wrongs than our own.)

That's why so many people, irrespective of their political affiliations, react to the financial crisis and say, "It isn't fair and something needs to be done about it."

And even if members of Congress charged with oversight have spent most of the past two decades overlooking the practices of unscrupulous lenders and investment bankers, fnow affecting a Claude Rains-like horror, from where I sit, from one Christian's perspective, I agree: It isn't fair.

[To read the first three installments of this series, see here, here, and here.]

The Financial Crisis from One Christian's Perspective (Part 3)

In the previous installment of this series, I named four major ways, from a Christian perspective, that we can avoid making bad financial decisions. They were:

• Recognize that money is morally neutral. It's neither good or bad. It's only what we do with it or do to get it that are good or bad.
  
• Recognize that money is a power. Either we will control it or it will control us.
• Recognize that some people are more adept at making money than others. Those who can should be encouraged to make and use money for the glory of God, the giver of every perfect gift. Those who can't should avoid jealousy. Helping others is an important way that wealth can be used.
• Avoid covetousness.

Note that in none of what I said there did I give any "practical" advice on investing in 401K's, 403B's, IRAs, money market funds, real estate, the stock market, gold, baseball cards, Beanie Babies, or anything else. I haven't said that you should save a certain percentage of your income. I haven't told you to go into plastics.

Frankly, I have no idea what practical advice I might give you on that stuff. More importantly, the Bible is silent on such matters, although I hope that you have sense enough to see that some investments are wiser than others. The Bible does promise that if you ask for wisdom, God will grant it to you. (So, ask for it!) I also believe that God gifts people who can give you good advice on finances if you're willing to listen to them. (Those financially savvy advisers may be one way God answers your prayers for financial wisdom.)

But here's what all four of the above principles have in common: They deal with our attitudes. And really all four of them could, in a way, be subsumed under the fourth one, avoid covetousness.

It's interesting that we have, in the traditional reckoning recognized by my Christian tradition, Lutheranism, ten commandments. Eight of them deal with actions, or at least the implication of actions.*

But then come two commandments, the ninth and tenth, which deal with our attitudes:

• You shall not covet your neighbor's house (ninth)
• You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his cattle, or anything that is your neighbor's (tenth)

To covet is to want something obsessively, desperately. And it isn't just wanting something, like we may want to pay off our mortgage or save enough to put our kids through college. Those desires have more to do with needs or legitimate aspirations for the good of others. They're perfectly legitimate.

Nor is coveting the desire for a better life, the ache for intimacy, or the pining for God which, I believe, lives in everyone of us. Saint Augustine wasn't exhibiting covetousness when he famously said, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you." As John Eldredge convincingly argues in his book, The Journey of Desire, we are fashioned for eternity. So, we have eternal appetites. And while God's eternity has been revealed to us in the experiences of ancient Israel and ultimately, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, we aren't there yet. It's our home and we ache for it. That isn't covetousness. That's being human.

Covetousness happens when we confuse the eternal for the temporary, when we mistakenly think that we are God, with a self-conferred right to own, manipulate, or control whatever we want. We covet when we think that the hole in our soul can be filled by the trophies of the world.

Covetousness can lead to actions. But covetousness is an attitude of mind, a bend of the soul. To overcome covetousness, our attitudes need changing. But how does that happen? Here are a few ideas.

First: We need to change our god. Paul Tillich said that whatever is most important to us is our god, our "ground of being." Our ground of being must change if we're to overcome covetousness.

One of the bad things we inherit as members of the human race though, is an inborn orientation away from the real God, the One Who made this universe. We don't have to be taught to be self-worship. It comes naturally to us. We need to turn away from our sins and our selfish orientation because it's this turning away from God that leads us to believe that everything we want should be ours simply because we want it. In one of my favorite passages of Scripture, and one of the simplest, the Gospel of Mark summarizes the substance of Jesus' ministry before He died and was resurrected:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15)

To repent means to turn around. It means to quit following ourselves, our sin, or whatever else we see as most important in our lives and to instead, follow the God ultimately revealed in Jesus. The good news Jesus talks about is that we have new and everlasting life with Him as a free gift.

Second: We need to change our minds. In a passage of the New Testament many of us read or heard in our churches a week ago, the apostle Paul quotes a hymn commonly sung by first century Christians when he writes:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus...(Philippians 2:1-13)

When we turn to the God we meet in Christ (and do it again each day because it's so easy to fall back into the bad attitudes that can lead to Wall Street crashes, personal morality crashes, or relational crashes, among other bad stuff), God begins to reconstruct our minds and our lives. We become, in Martin Luther's phrase, "the Holy Spirit's workshop."

Notice though that we can do little to change our attitudes, even though doing so requires hard work on our parts. We can only make ourselves available to God, giving God access to our whole lives, then watching what God does.

And we can only give God access to our lives by being part of the body of Christ, the Church. As Kathryn Kleinans says:

...the Word of God [through which God imparts life and changes us] comes to us from outside ourselves, breaking into our sinful self-centeredness. We hear God's gracious "for you" most clearly when we hear it in a voice other than our own. We feel God's gracious "for you" when we are splashed with water from the [baptismal] font. When we taste the bread and wine, we confess that Christ is really present, his own body and blood giving life to ours...Faith plugs us in to an ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ. We have power because his power flows through us.

When that happens, God will begin to set aside our self-propelled agendas. It's God's doing, affected through the community of the Church.

But, putting our egos, ambitions, actions, relationships, and wallets under the control and direction of the God made known in Jesus is the hardest thing in the world to do. I've been a Christian now for thirty-two years and I often fail miserably in this surrender business. It hasn't gotten any easier. In fact, in some ways, it becomes harder. But I have learned an ironic lesson:

The more I yield control of my life to Christ, the more Christ frees me to be my truest, best, and happiest self. The more I follow the dictates of my selfish ambitions, the more miserable I become and the more imprisoned to things, people, and shifting whims.

We covet because we think it will free us from the pedestrian concerns of the great unwashed masses. But in the end, the things we covet enslave us to grave-bound stuff, earmarked for oblivion.

A passage in the Psalms, the Old Testament songbook, says:

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)

Our greatest, if often unacknowledged, desire is to be connected to the One Who made us and gives us life and to experience the peace and purpose for which we were made. That fulfilling connection can't be monetized or counted. It's a qualitative change of heart, mind, and life that will, if we let God work on us, change what we value, what we seek, and what we do.

When we put God first in our lives, God will begin to change us. What we want will change and what we truly want and need will be ours.

[Next installment: God's justice and the financial crisis.]

*The first eight commandments proscribe the following positive behaviors:

1. Offer worship to only one God (first)
2. Only use God's Name for prayer, praise, and thanksgiving (second)
3. Use one day a week for corporate worship and to heed God's Word (third)
4. Give honor to your parents and others God has put in positions of authority (fourth)
5. Preserve and safeguard the lives of others (fifth)
6. Keep yourself sexually clean, reserving intimacy for marriage (sixth)
7. Refrain from taking your neighbors' property and help them to keep what they own (seventh)
8. Speak the truth in love about others, refraining from gossip or slander (eighth)

The Financial Crisis from One Christian's Perspective (Part 2)

The first installment in this series appeared in a shorter form yesterday over at The Moderate Voice, a site to which I've been contributing posts since last November. One of the commenters there said this:

You seem to be blaming all borrowers as if they all knew they would be in trouble with those mortgages. Some of them were not too bright (surprised?) and others too ambitious, hoping they could make it. Some lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

It was never my intention to paint with too broad a brush. My intent, simply, was to say that the greedy lending houses would not have gotten themselves--and the US economy--where they are right now were it not for the success they enjoyed in selling their ephemera to greedy consumers. Not all consumers who are apt to be hurt by this crisis by the time it runs its course were greedy. Not everybody who took out a loan was greedy. But some were. As I said yesterday, "Only those willing to be seduced are seduced."

The question before us is, from a Christian perspective, how do we avoid making bad financial decisions? How do we keep from being willingly seduced by those trying to palm off financial sugar water?

First: Recognize that money is neutral. It's neither bad or good. It's a tool, a means to ends. One of the most misquoted passages of the Bible says:

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil...(1 Timothy 6:10)

Notice that Paul, the writer of this passage doesn't say that money in itself is evil. He says that the love of it is the problem.

The love Paul describes here is what we might refer to as an addiction, a force at the bottom of a person's every motive and decision. For people like this, money is everything: the scorecard by which they measure their worth, the toy factory, their pleasure-maker.

People who love money make it the central force in their lives. It then supplants all of their relationships, whether with God or with others. It's no wonder then that Jesus says that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person, who is likelier to have succumbed to the addictive power of money, supplanting God in the person's allegiance, to get into God's kingdom.

Second: Recognize then, that money is a power. This insight was first brought to my attention by Richard Foster in his incredible book, Money, Sex, and Power. As Foster explains there, either we will get control of our money or our money will control us. Often, those with a lot of money think that they are in control. And it is true that in many ways, the wealthy can do more than those with less. No one could deny that.

But I have also seen how wealth allows the wealthy to indulge fantasies of invincibility that come to grief when the normal downs in life that can rock all of us hit them harder than those more attuned to reality through their more modest finances.

I've also seen the wealthy become understandably distrustful of others. The wealthy are often assailed by people who "want a piece of the action." This, in turn, can lead to deep cynicism, which is unhinged from reality, too.

Whether it results of delusions of invincibility or the acid of cynicism, money is a power, an addictive power. When we see it as a tool, a means rather than an end, we are on the road to controlling our finances and the impulse to greed.

Third: Recognize that some people are more adept at making money than others. I have several long-term friendships with people who simply have a facility for generating income and making the right choices on what to do with their money to make it grow. They're shrewd about making money. Shrewdness is not a bad thing.

I'm not financially shrewd. I've never been a money-making machine. Now, I could resent that and I won't say that there haven't been times in my life when I haven't been resentful. But the Bible teaches that each of us has gifts, talents, both natural and supernatural, from God. In his book, The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren, who gives something like 90% of the royalties from his writing to the church, says that the thing for the Church to do with members who have the facility for making money is to encourage them to make more. Christians who make a lot of money, aware that this ability, along with every other good gift, comes from God, will be will be able to use money to support a broad array of church, charitable, and community projects. I agree with him.

Those of us who aren't financially shrewd should, instead of being resentful, use our gifts and abilities to their maximum positive effect.

Fourth: Avoid what the Bible calls covetousness. I hope to say more on what that means, why it's counterproductive, and most importantly, what can be done about it, tomorrow.

The Financial Crisis from One Christian's Perspective (Part 1)

Only those willing to be seduced are seduced.

Nobody persuaded into doing the wrong thing can credibly argue, "He tricked me," or, "She jumbled my thinking," or "The devil made me do it." The evil all around may pull at us, but we are the ones who cave into our inborn tendency to do the wrong thing, no matter what the wrong.

Believe me, I know. I do things that are wrong and, in the end, I realize I only have myself to blame.

Only those willing to be seduced are successfully seduced. I've been thinking about that a lot lately as the nation grapples with the financial crisis. It was caused, it's said, by the reckless policies of major lending institutions. Obscene compensation and benefits packages given to corporate CEOs and other company hot shots made things worse.

It's all true, of course. And these realities are among the reasons that both Democratic and Republican members of the House of Representatives offer for not passing the $700-billion bailout or rescue package forged by the White House and congressional leaders over. "Why should we give $700-billion to these greedy corporate honchos?" It's a fair question.*

I hate it when legitimacy, such as that enjoyed by the captains of the lending industry in recent years, is given by the government. For several decades now, Democratic and Republican Presidents and Congresses have endorsed and allowed the practices of the big investment bankers and mortgage lenders. Presidents lauded the ever-increasing homeownership rates, ignoring the fact that this "progress" was a house of cards erected on financial quicksand, bricks and mortar stacked on onion skin paper. It's high time that the illegitimate practices of the big mortgage houses were changed.

But others' practices need to be changed as well: Those of the borrowing public.

Nobody forced people to get sub-prime loans. Nobody forced consumers to buy houses with no money down, with insufficient income to make loan payments, all on the less-than-shrewd bet that property values would inevitably increase and, borrowing from projected future value, they could refinance their way out of debt. And nobody forces consumers to use their charge cards as revolving loans.

The greed of the now-pilloried corporations was rewarded for the past twenty years by equally greedy consumers who were working the angles to get into houses, to own other things, to effectively steal their ways to more comfortable lifestyles.

Greedy lenders seduced people. But they couldn't have been successful without greedy borrowers who were willing to be seduced.

The Biblical bases for today's Our Daily Bread devotion is Proverbs 1:8-19. For those not familiar with the passage or with the Old Testament book of Proverbs generally, a little background is in order. The book is a collection of wisdom sayings given by God to King Solomon.** These specific verses underscore how important it is for young people to listen to the wisdom given to them by their parents. "Pay close attention, friend, to what your father tells you; never forget what you learned at your mother's knee..." It goes on to say:

Dear friend, if bad companions tempt you, don't go along with them...[when they say]...We'll load up on top-quality loot. We'll haul it home by the truckload."...Don't give [the enticers] a second look; don't listen to them for a minute.***

Then it concludes by saying that the greedy who want to haul in truckloads come to bad ends:

...they lie in wait--to kill themselves! And set an ambush--for their own lives! Such is the end of all who are greedy for gain; it takes away the life of its possessors."****

Here in Ohio yesterday, voters began deciding the fate of two state issues. One will reduce the interest that payday lenders can charge. The other will allow casino gambling in the middle of the state. Payday lenders are predatory, charging as much as 392% in interest rates and casino gambling rarely brings the economic benefits proponents trumpet, resulting instead, in low-wage jobs and in preying most on those who can ill-afford to part with their money. So, I intend to vote yes on limiting the payday lenders and no on casino gambling.

But, don't be mistaken, greed merchants can't make a sale if people aren't buying.

Tomorrow, a few thoughts on how we avoid the enticements of the greedy.

*Proponents argue equally fairly that the bailout is really for the entire economy, restoring liquidity so that deserving consumers and business owners can have the credit they need to buy homes, invest in inventory, and make payrolls.

**Solomon is an interesting case. He began his reign recognizing that to compensate for his lack of experience, he needed wisdom. God was impressed that, rather than asking for wealth or power, Solomon asked for the wisdom to do his job well. But Solomon came to a bad end. He didn't go to the poorhouse. But with his wisdom came the capacity to acquire lots of money, women, property, and power. He became so consumed by these things that he wandered far from God. He oversaw the conversion of Israel into a society of greed-merchants, everyone on the take. Shortly after Solomon's death, the nation divided and, eventually, was conquered by foreigners. When the major object of a nation is to acquire stuff that's of no use to us after we die, the nation, no matter how much it's been blessed, dies.

***This is from The Message's rendering of Proverbs 1:8-10

****This is from the translation in The New Revised Standard Version of Proverbs 1:18-19

[Go here for thoughts on the meaning of 'the American Dream.']

[A shorter version of this piece appears on The Moderate Voice.]