The Ultimate Social Issue

Welcome to the Big Picture Podcast. I’m Joel Fieri, and once again this podcast seeks to begin and hopefully sustain a conversation about current trends, ideas and issues in the Church and greater society. On today’s podcast I want to conclude my focus on social issues, the issues that challenge our faith and our God in different ways.

Today’s podcast will be part three of my three podcasts on social issues. On my previous podcast 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 earbud social issues, those that appeal to us quietly and in secret. If you missed either or both of those podcasts, please check out my website at gobigpicture.net or the E-Squared podcast network at e2network.net.

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 number three, The Ultimate Social Issue, and that issue is, if you haven’t figured it out already, money.

We really 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 how to manage your 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 and savings to success. 20% of the 10 commandments deal with wealth, specifically that your neighbor’s wealth is his not yours, and fully one third of Jesus’ parables deal with money or riches.

It’s clear that the Bible sees how we view and handle money as a key, and 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 Judaeo-Christian culture that our society has abandoned, money, and more specifically debt, is maybe the biggest. The levels of spending and debt we’re 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.”

Jay is six feet eight inches tall, so knee deep to him is waist 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 overspending will eventually lead to a breakdown of society as a whole. History does not paint a pretty picture of economies that collapse, and 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. They’ve had to resort to burning furniture and chopping down trees from local parks and forests just to heat their homes as the price of oil has skyrocketed due to the country’s 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 all of 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 overspending habits of Greece, and it is an overspending problem. Many will say it’s 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 worldwide scale, and with the abandonment of most of the other restraining tenets of Judaeo-Christian worldview, we can fairly well predict a certain level of 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 potential persecution that will surely come? And yes, it will come, because in hard times those without faith, without eternal perspective or accountability to adjust God, will seek scapegoats, and historically they’ve always found them in people who do have that faith and perspective.

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 US, 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 some pretty monstrous forces of evil around the globe. Collapse those pillars with bankruptcy, and that protection will be gone.

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 so much to say about, and that’s money, the ultimate social issue.

In closing, as always I want to bring 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, and once again, if you don’t know that reference please check out Hebrews, chapters 11 and 12 in your Bible.

Today’s witness again comes to us unnamed except for first name. Last week’s witness was unnamed. This week I want to introduce you to Dominguez, and here’s his story.

The 20-year-old Bible student was asleep when he was awakened by shouts of “Allahu Akbar,” Allah is Almighty. Radical Muslims entered his room and beat him nearly unconscious. As Dominguez fought to escape, a sickle came down on the back of his neck, nearly severing his head. The attackers left him in a growing pool of his own blood, assuming he would soon die.

Dominguez said that his spirit left his body and was carried by angels to heaven and he witnessed his own corpse lying motionless on the ground. He no longer felt fear or pain, but rather peace as he awaited his new life with Christ, then he heard, “It is not time for you to serve me here.”

The next voices Dominguez heard were those of Indonesian emergency medical workers. Since they did not know whether he was a Christian or Muslim, they were discussing where to take his body. Dominguez prayed to God for strength to speak. Finally, the words, “I’m a Christian,” came out. One can only imagine the look on the workers’ faces as the dead student answered their question.

Today Dominguez has fully recovered. His physical scars remain, but his spirit has a renewed faith and a message of forgiveness. Dominguez stated he is closer to God and now he is actively praying for his Muslim neighbors, even those who attacked him.

I’d like to add Dominguez, and God knows his last name, to the Great Cloud of Witnesses of whom the world, and frankly myself, is not worthy.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this week’s Big Picture Podcast, please go to my website at gobigpicture.net and also check out our other podcasts and points of view on the E-Squared Podcast network at e2network.net. Wherever you go, please leave a few comments and tell your friends about us.

See you next time on the Big Picture Podcast. Be blessed.