From the October 2 issue of Reuters comes this article entitled: “A Moral Reason Behind The Crunch” so I want you to listen to this.
Evangelicals see moral decline in Wall St. woes, says Ed Stoddard.
Conservative U.S. Christians say their culture has gone wrong and has taken the economy and Wall Street down with it. It is a view which outsiders may find puzzling but has wide resonance in the U.S. heartland: the notion that moral decay and a lost sense of responsibility has brought on the worst banking and credit crisis since the Great Depression.
Such a view helps explain the unpopularity in conservative Christian circles — which have a big influence on the Republican Party — of a $700 billion bailout plan which the U.S. House of Representatives first rejected, rocking financial markets.
Mounting consumer and household debt as housing prices fall is one of the main reasons behind the current crisis — a crisis that religious conservatives say has moral roots.
The narrative goes roughly like this: the “collapse” of the traditional family, widespread divorce and a “permissive” culture have led to a disregard for personal responsibility.
A culture focused on instant gratification — through the overuse of credit cards to buy consumer goods, for example — has also lost other “traditional values” such as thrift and hard work.
“You can’t have a strong, vibrant society when you don’t have strong, vibrant families. It’s a crisis of commitment, it’s a crisis of responsibility,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.
“If you don’t live up to your responsibility you are going to see that in the broader culture. You see this on Wall Street,” he said. It is a view that has been echoed by other conservative commentators, on Christian radio stations and on popular “Talk Radio” programs.
“To spend more than you’ve got is not the way we brought up our kids…
You have a whole credit industry that grew up around people wanting what their parents had without working 20 years to get it,” said Gary Ledbetter, spokesman for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.
Tying “values” to economic problems is one way that religious conservatives can keep some focus on the “culture” issues they have long fought over as public attention is riveted on Wall Street, job security and house prices. Upholding “traditional” values which they say have been under assault since the 1960s informs much of their outlook, ranging from their opposition to abortion and gay rights to a professed aversion to heavy debt loads.
“Although debt is not a sin, it also is not a normal way of life, according to Scripture… debt is a dangerous tool that must be used, if at all, with extreme caution and much prayer,” says the conservative evangelical advocacy group “Focus on the Family” on its web site.
End of article.
Whether you like it or not, history has shown us that all major civilizations have fallen not because of outside attacks but because of internal moral decay. We need to learn the lessons of history. There will always be an operational cause and effect principle at work. Whatsoever you sow you shall reap.
Watch out for decay.
And the way to deal with this is to be familiar with Scriptures. Not only with what the Word of God says but with the God of the Word as Lord and Savior. This world has offered a lot of empty and false promises. Many things you read about are untrue. This is why you need to read the Bible, because by doing so, it prevents truth decay.