FINANCIAL CRISIS

I don’t pretend to have a handle on all that is happening in our troubled financial world even though I taught Economics to VCE students, but it has certainly got me thinking.

One thing that went through my mind was it doesn’t worry me because you can’t lose what you haven’t got. I don’t have treasure laid up on earth as such. Just a bit to keep me going from week to week, so my losses in the financial meltdown are virtually nil.

I haven’t got much because I invested in a business run by a Christian businessman and he cheated me out of all of it. I have tried to get it back but the law seems to favour con merchants not honest people.

Second, I have heard more than once that the world is a reflection of the church or the church is a reflection of the world.

The financial meltdown as far as I understand was caused by one thing…GREED.

I can’t help noticing that the dominant fad of the last 30 years in the church is the prosperity doctrine. You know, give to God and he will bless you with abundance in return. I saw one prosperity minister say on TV that this church believes that you are meant to be rich.

Obviously he got his guidance from the gospel according to Donald Trump. Most of the talk about money in the New Testament is about giving it away, not about getting it. God gives you the power to get wealth but it doesn’t say so that you can drive around in a Rolls Royce as Creflo Dollar does.

My friend Harry Greenwood who was a very generous man, said prosperity is having your needs met and some left over to meet the needs of others.

Perhaps the financial meltdown has come because the church is too focused on its wealth or as Bill Muelenberg has said “We Christians can be just as trusting in financial security as non-Christians can. We can worship mammon just as much a nonbelievers can. And we can think that wealth is the be all and end all just as much as nonbelievers can”.

Perhaps God is trying to get us to listen to him. Perhaps he wants to tell us that there is more to life than riches. Perhaps he is trying to get across the message that the Christian walk is one of denial not one of self serving riches. Perhaps he is trying to wean us of reliance on the world’s financial values and onto his financial values. Perhaps he is trying to tell us that you can’t serve God and money.

Whatever it is, you can be sure of one thing. Putting your trust in stuff that rusts and corrupts is sure a stupid idea, especially when you can invest it in the Kingdom of God now and get a 100% return in changed lives.