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In today’s podcast I want to conclude my focus on social issues, the issues that challenge our faith and our God in very different ways.

On my previous podcasts I focused on two categories of social issues, one being ‘megaphone’ social issues, issues that confront us at full volume, and another category I call ‘ear bud’ social issues, those that appeal to us quietly and in secret.

Now, to wrap up my series on social issues, I promised you my take on the ultimate social issue, one that faces us loudly as a culture and church, quietly as individuals and families, and at every other level in between. It’s an issue that has only begun to have ramifications and consequences at every level of society, families and relationships. It’s also something that God, in His infinite wisdom, thought important enough to mention more than any other subject in the Bible.

So now that I’ve teased you enough, here we go with social issues podcast #3: The Ultimate Social Issue.

And that issue is, if you haven’t figured it out already, money.

We rarely think of money or finances as spiritual issues, but I don’t know why.

As I mentioned, the Bible has more to say about money than any other subject.

By a long shot!

Crown Ministries has listed 2,350 verses in the Bible that mention some expression of wealth or money, either directly as to how to manage money, or using money as illustrations or parables to teach spiritual truth.

Money is all over the Word of God.

Every aspect imaginable is covered , from budgeting to business planning, taxes to tithing, savings to success.

Twenty percent of the Ten Commandments deal with wealth (specifically that your neighbors wealth is his, not yours) and fully one-third of Jesus’ parables dealt with money or riches.

It’s clear that the Bible sees how we view and handle money as a key, maybe even THE key, to our spiritual lives.

Now why would that be?

Well, I think the answer is clear as we look at what’s happening with money in our society today.

Of all the principles of traditional Judeo-Christian culture that our society has abandoned, money – and more specifically debt – is the biggest.

The levels of spending and debt we are incurring as a society and as individuals is beyond staggering. As Jay Carty put it in his new book “Prayer For Rookies”:

“Immediate gratification and a selfish sense of entitlement form the core of our mindset as a nation. Neither the people nor the government will stop overspending; continually surging credit card debt and the growing national deficit are proof of this. The tanking of the economy is representative of our spiritual condition as a nation. Selfish ‘living for the moment’ has left us economically and spiritually bankrupt. Several generations to follow will find themselves knee-deep in debt because of our lifestyles.”

Now Jay is 6’ -8” tall, so knee deep to him is waste deep to the rest of us, but he’s spot on with what he says.

But I want to go further and state that western society’s addiction to over-spending will eventually lead to a breakdown of society as a whole.

History does not paint a pretty picture of economies that collapse.

That picture is beginning to come into focus now in Greece, for instance. A news article caught mine and my wife’s attention recently. It reported on the desperate state of Greek families this winter, as they’ve had to resort to burning furniture and chopped-down trees from local parks and forests to heat their homes, as the price of oil has skyrocketed due to the countries failing economy. Smog is covering the city of Athens as a result.

If you’ve been following the modern Greek tragedy of debt and bankruptcy sweeping across Europe, you can fairly well predict that there will be more and more social upheaval and desperation in western societies, most prominently our own, that have followed the same over-spending habits of Greece.

And it is an over-spending problem.

Many will say it is a problem of not enough revenue, in other words ‘taxes’. But folks, we, with our childish, irrational and irresponsible addiction to spending, have racked up multiple trillions of dollars in debt.

That’s trillion with a capital ‘T’.

There isn’t enough money in the entire world to pay off the debts of western society, which means eventually we will have Greece on a world-wide scale.

And with the abandonment of most of the other restraining tenets of the Judeo Christian worldview, we can fairly well predict chaos.

Are we as a society ready for that?

Are we as the Church, ready for that?

And finally, are we as believers ready for the hard times and persecution that will surely come.

And, yes it will come, because in hard times, those without faith, without eternal perspective or accountability to a just God, will seek scapegoats. And historically, they’ve always found them in people who do have that faith and perspective.

And also, for my fellow Christians who embrace so many of today’s progressive causes, let me say that in the wake of the collapse of Western economies, especially the U.S., there will be very little social justice anywhere in the world. The environment will be thoroughly polluted and human trafficking will flourish, with no one able to stop it.

It’s very chic and trendy these days to trash western civilization as the root of most or all injustice and exploitation in the world, but reality, and history, are demanding now that we come to grips with the fact that the same ideological and cultural pillars that have caused the west to prosper have also been holding back monstrous forces of evil around the globe.

Collapse those pillars with bankruptcy, and that protection will be gone.

Now maybe that’s God’s plan. And He is definitely in control of the future, and in the end, He wins.

But as for me, I can’t assume that that fact absolves or protects me as an individual, or us as a Church and society, from the consequences and accountability for reckless and sinful abuse of the precious resource that God’s Word has the so much to say about, and that’s money, the Ultimate Social Issue.

In closing, I want to bring to you the Great Cloud Of Witnesses, the segment of our podcast where we meet and hear the stories of those who have given, and some who are still giving, their lives by faith in the promises of God, and of whom the world was and is not worthy (if you don’t know that reference, please check out Hebrews chapters 11 and 12 in your Bible).

Today’s witness is Dominguez – a 20-year-old Bible student beaten by Islamic attackers.  He said that while he laid on the ground, almost decapitated by a sickle, he was carried to heaven by angels.  He did not feel pain or fear, but instead peace.  Then he heard, “It is not time for you to serve me here.”

As workers debated what to do with Dominguez’s body, he fought to utter the words, “I am a Christian”, to the amazement of the workers who had thought him dead.

Today, he has fully recovered.  He is closer to God and actively praying for his Muslim neighbors – even those who attacked him with a newfound forgiveness that can only come from God Himself.