THE MASKED ANGEL:
It's been some time since I've put up a new post, but I admit this next subject required a bit of research on my part. It concerns a subject that many people don't know the Catholic Church has weighed in on but we have let secularists and atheists dictate the outlook and outcomes. Since I have established time and again atheists are idiots, we need to get back to what God says about how His Children are to handle the gifts given to them.
Now, one may wonder what the phrase heads has to do with how to fix our economy. Often people—who oddly enough all bill themselves as financial and economic experts—say “if only we do this” or “if only the government does this” then things will be better. Yet one is often at the expense of the other and not in support of it. I agree with people who say government should not go past its proper authority but like it or not, government is part of GDP calculation. So instead of viewing personal choices and government policy as either-or, we must view it instead as two sides of the same coin.
This took me quite a bit of time to research, weighing all the advice out there and the economic theories that sound nice on paper but don’t work in practice. I’ve now realized all the grand theories in the world don’t mean a thing if people—no, I am not demeaning them by using the term “consumers”—don’t change how they live their lives.
Why is that?
Our American economy is the most admired in the world, but once you look at it close enough, it’s in reality pretty stupid…in the sense it more reacts than acts on anything—playing solely defense if you will. Every product and service that exists only exists because there is a demand for it…demand that the people provide. So the power does lie with us.
So how do we get that power back?
1. Read what the Bible says about debt.
In the D-R Bible, the word debt is flat out used nine times and each time it's portrayed in a negative light. In fact, the only time debt is implied in a positive light is in relation to the debt we have for what Christ has done for us.
In the Torah alone, debt was paid off in the form of temporary enslavement so you can imagine the connection between debt and slavery.
2. Look long and hard about your own finances.
It's not how much money you bring in a year but how much you're worth. What's the difference? The first one is how much you work for money and the second is how much money is working for you. Another key difference is the first is how much money you bring in after paying bills and the second is how much you have minus what you owe.
Here is the crux of how atheism has infected the economy (at least on this level): we have convinced ourselves that we have to have everything in order to be rich. We see this in "buy now, pay later", "pass the buck onto the next generation" (more on this in the next blog) and "you need credit to make ends meet."
[Quick side note about that last one: many people just starting out think they need a credit card to build credit history. The truth is only 10% of your overall score is based off of credit history length; the vast majority is based off how well you pay bills on time and how much total debt you have.]
If you still are convinced you you must borrow to get ahead, consider how people lived in the 50's: most everything was paid with cash and people who worked then have far more worth than people today.
3. If you are in debt, form a plan to get out ASAP!!
You can’t change an economy if you’re always a slave to it and some companies have convinced people they can’t live decent lives without going into debt thereby making them permanent slaves. (bible verses about this). After looking into proven methods of how to get out of debt, the best works I’ve found are from Dave Ramsey and (author of Faith Finances). I’ve read both methods and I prefer the second one (though I suspect they both meant the same thing). Here are the links to both methods:
For Dave Ramsey, click here.
For Faith Finances, click here.
4. Start tithing
I know at first glance this one doesn’t make sense in light of the fact I just said pay off all debt, but consider this for a moment: social programs to help the less fortunate do a better job if they’re run by churches and private charities. Yes, some don’t manage funds well, but overall they have a much better track record than government programs. So where will they get the funds from? We don’t want government handouts, so the only other options are donations and trust funds, both of which require the donors to be financially free.
5. Own as much assets as you can.
This goes hand-in-hand with 3, but many don’t realize the difference between an asset and a liability, so let’s do a little quiz for this:
Which of the following items are assets?
-a house
-a rental property
-stock portfolio
-certificate of deposit
-an itunes music list
If your answers included either the first one or the last one, you don’t have a firm grasp of assets. Without getting into too much financial jargon, let’s just say there are many sources available for people to learn the difference. (we’ll come back to this concept in the next
Blog post.)
6. Change your attitude about how money works.
There is truth to the adage “whoever has the gold makes the rules.” Why else do you think all these companies produce and think they can get away with producing such inferior, morally offensive products? And why would they listen to people who can’t make ends meet? Adult-oriented companies would have disappeared AGES ago if enough people of God bought them out, shut it down and liquidated all available assets. In fact, if Christians owned enough of America, almost no smut would exist…a pipedream, sure but it would at least be more plausible.
There are two parts of every economy: the micro and macro. However, this issue, like other issues, must begin from the ground up.
Come back next time for what we must demand from the government.
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