“Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death. The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked. A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.” Proverbs 10:2-5
Recently there has grown up quite a tumult and uproar over the stock of a company called GameStop. During the pandemic shutdowns many of its brick and mortar store locations were in heaps of trouble and the company was losing hundreds of millions. It was, however, fighting off the severe headwinds of growing debt by trying to transfer more of its sales online. Nevertheless, its stock price had been quite low – around $3. The last time I checked, though, it was now over $300. What happened? Ah, you’re quite right to ask such a basic and obvious question.
First, the floundering company didn’t suddenly come across some new and thrilling business model which catapulted it into the Wall Street atmosphere. On the contrary, its meteoric rise has had everything to do with the nebulous workings of “shorts” and “options” and all that. Large hedge funds on Wall Street had been making money on the collapse of the company’s stock. This is everyday behavior among the financial class. What’s different this time is that another group, uncouth, untrained, and bush-league small investors banded together and drove GameStop’s stock price upward. This has caused, quite amusingly, catastrophic losses among the skilled elites.
Well, we aren’t here to discuss the shenanigans and inner-workings of all that. We merely wish to bring one’s attention to the sinful mess that is the American financial system. The GameStop comedy-drama, with the biggest bully beatdown since Ralphie shockingly pummeled Scut Farkus in the snow, is but a canary in the coal mine. God warns nations before He judges them. Always. He’s a merciful God, after all, and He desires a contrite heart, not judgment but if He must use judgment to bring sinners to repentance, He will certainly do that.
That said, America’s entire financial system is akin to an alcoholic who beat the bottle by getting addicted to cocaine. The entire system is shot through with preposterous and, therefore, toxic levels of debt. And this has happened because we’ve all, lock, stock and barrel, politicians and voters alike, become addicted to inflationary money. Biblical principles of economics, charity and law are literally unknown even within the church! Everyone wants a “quick buck” – everyone wants something for nothing from the false god we tacitly serve – the state.
The biblical model of work is that we engage in productive enterprise for God’s glory first, using our talents and opportunities to serve a need for our neighbor. This is the moral center of economics – productivity and service. And it’s how people are to earn their living before the Lord. This compensation is to be always, by the order of God, a win-win exchange. No one is to profit at the expense of another. Ever. Man has a thousand ways great and small to do this but the Lord calls it theft and He will judge it, of that you should not doubt.
For example, a stock-broker who uses his/her expertise to skillfully manage someone else’s money, for their long term benefit, is doing Godly work. A writer, baker, teacher, home school parent!, plumber, electrician, salesman, hairdresser, musician, landscaper, architect…all are doing Godly labor if they do it biblically. Labor is a gift from God and we are all called to produce! What labor should you do? That’s between you and God and you discover that quite easily. Do you have the talent (through training and discipline), the opportunity, can it serve others and glorify God, is it sufficient to provide for your material needs without compromising your other spiritual responsibilities? Sin is found, though, at the extremes, as always.
Laziness is a horrible sin as it forces others to produce for you. Greedy manipulation of resources and civil rules for unjust gain is also a sin. In other words, doing nothing productive with the heart of loving service of others and expecting something anyway is a sin (whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys Proverbs 18:9). But so is the goal of making money through inflation, debt, and “betting” on stocks. Our attitude toward money will tell us quite a bit about our ultimate heart commitment and it’s why Proverbs 16:8 says “better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice.”
To that end, the book of Proverbs is a veritable economics textbook, never divorcing the love of God, and obeying Him, from our labor. In fact, it’s the only book in the world that gets the balance right. Is it any wonder why any nation that based its home life, law and economy on the principles found herein has prospered?
A false balance is an abomination (Proverbs 11:1), which is, in today’s terms, making money off of a rigged system, a defective or useless product, or some other kind of con. Our exchanges should always be fair and, yes, even loving.
The hand of the diligent will rule (Proverbs 12:24). We’re commanded to work with focus, as unto the Lord. In all toil there is profit (14:23) and we’re to commit our work to the Lord so that our plans are to be established (Proverbs 16:3). So, you see, the goal of labor isn’t merely to make money, but to serve the Lord. All work and enterprise apart from this will give way to the sinful impulses of either greed or slothfulness. Granted, our flesh doesn’t like this, regardless of how plain is the commandment, so we monkey around with economics and law in order to reorder God’s design. The result is always chaos and despair. Then, when we reap the whirlwind of debt bubbles, depressions and poverty, which are the natural results of our ungodliness applied to economics, we double down.
But these dislocations are warning signs of the greater danger. “When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin his heart rages against the Lord. (Proverbs 19:3).” God’s economic laws are meant to lead us to Him and yet we turn to charlatans, wolves in sheep’s clothing, and politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with their message of more and more government debt, inflation and taxation.
In all, America is beginning to see the heavy clouds of judgment coming on the horizon because God isn’t ever mocked. When we insist upon going our own way we must convince ourselves that God doesn’t care what we do with our money and talents, which is to say He isn’t righteous. How perilous a thought! Pride does indeed precede man’s fall. Yet Americans have convinced themselves, and worse still, many Christians, that they can be a Christian at home, or on Sunday, and then vote for and support the Tower of Babel that is Washington D.C.’s economic and legal quagmire.
Listen to Noah Webster (1758-1843):
“Every civil government is based upon some religion or philosophy of life. Education in a nation will propagate the religion of that nation. In America, the foundational religion was Christianity and it was sown in the hearts of Americans through the home and private and public schools for centuries. Our liberty, growth, and prosperity was the result of a Biblical philosophy of life. Our continued freedom and success is dependent on our educating the youth of America in the principles of Christianity.”
“The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.”
What philosophy or religion does Washington and Wall Street adhere to now? What is the core tenet of our education system? Is it not that man is god and that God has nothing to say to him? And so we talk of loving our neighbor and yet all that talk leads only to the corruption, deceit, abuse of power, debt, taxes, mind-numbing regulations that require scores of lawyers to decipher, and tyranny we see all around us. If every man’s highest goal is himself then it’s only logical that he’ll sacrifice his neighbor in ways small and great whenever he has to. If every man’s core principle is his own happiness, not God’s Word, honor will be washed away by the pulverizing tide of greed and power.
So, GameStop is merely a small rumble underneath our feet, a predecessor of a great and violent quake to come. God hates dishonest scales. He hates all this “I win, you lose” theory of economics that creates money, not out of productivity and service, but through keystrokes at government sanctioned banks. He despises our fractional reserve banking as it’s an “unequal weight and unequal measure”. He calls all of it an abomination.
Don’t be deceived. The Lord is the Lord on Sunday just as well as He is Lord of economics and law too. And He absolutely, positively will not be mocked. All of this “making money” without the burden of productivity and service will be judged. All of this greed – from rich and poor alike – striving to get something for nothing, rather than working humbly and quietly before the Lord, and for His glory, and in service to your neighbor, will come to an end.
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