Help is on the Way

November 26, 2008 at 1:30 pm · Filed under Blog Response

President-elect Obama said on November 26, 2008:

People should understand that help is on the way. And as they think about this Thanksgiving shopping weekend and as they thing about this Christmas season coming up I hope that everybody understands that we are gonna be able to get through these difficult times, but we’re just gonna have to make some good choices.

“Help is on the Way”
The sphere of government is portrayed as the helper. This is an economic problem and it is the sphere of labor, community, and family within which the problem must be solved. What is it that government can do to “help” me as I consider buying Christmas gifts this weekend? The only way that they can give me money is if they take it from someone else. Does helping me mean stealing from someone else? If so, thanks, but no thanks.

As a child my family was poor. Around Christmas there were numerous years that people did “help” my family with the ability to give gifts. I remember the Salvation Army (the sphere of church) setting up tables with gifts on them for my mom to peruse and choose to wrap and put under our Christmas tree. I remember my youth pastor (the sphere of community) dropping a whole mess of gifts on my front porch signed “from Jesus”. The sphere of community can help my family with Christmas gifts, and they have proven that they will. But what can government do other than steal?

“Think About … Shopping”
Listen again to President-elect Obama. Here is the message. Go ahead and spend on Black Friday (should be renamed “Debtor’s Friday). If you overspend and place yourself further in the hole that you have already dug by buying a house that is too big, don’t worry! The government has a plan to give you some money for being irresponsible. In fact, the only way to prop up this dismal retail season is for people in debt to spend money that they don’t have and have “hope” that President-elect Obama and congress will give them more money to be irresponsible with and banks more money to lend them. The message is also, for those who have chosen to become conservative with their finances given the troubling signs, that we should stop being so stingy and spend our savings this weekend because President-elect Obama has a plan.

“Make Some Good Choices”
Look where the burden of choice-making about family finances lies in this quote by President-elect Obama. It is clearly the government that we can have confidence will make “good choices”. In another time he might have said that families will have to make good choices and some of those choices will feel an awful lot like sacrifices.

As for Me and My House
My wife and I have been planning for about six months to buy a camcorder for Christmas so that we can begin to video tape our children now that they are old enough to begin to have soccer games and be in programs and other public performances. But we looked at the amount that we have saved compared to the amount that is being demanded by our budget for primarily fuel for our van and the cost of groceries (the price of the whole wheat that my wife grinds for a significant portion of our food just rose 100% since our last order) and we had to choose to increase that savings cushion for the coming year. Where does that savings come from? No camcorder and just a couple gifts for each of our four kids (most of the gifts, like the Prince Caspian Movie, are for them to share anyway).

But are we doing our part for the economy? Well, Target won’t be getting as much of our money and we won’t be taking advantage of the great deals over at Beach Camera. But when it comes time for another tax rebate (of money that we didn’t pay in … thus our tax rebate was more like stealing from somebody who did make enough money to pay income tax) my family can say, I appreciate the thought, but we’ve gone ahead and saved for ourselves or looked to our church and community for help when needed. Now stop dipping your government sphere of authority into the pockets of the families, communities, and labor spheres to give my family money that we should have saved for ourselves.

Our Tickling Ears
So, President-elect Obama, I see that you are saying what our American tickling-ears wnat to hear. We did elect you because your message of “hope” has tickled us “blue”. But I don’t think your help is what we need after all. And yes, we will make it through these difficult times. But only if we can learn that sometimes “good choices” mean “good sacrifice”.

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Bar Stool Economics

October 27, 2008 at 9:48 am · Filed under Blog Response

Douglas Wilson at Blog and Mablog posted a forward he ran across. I think it does a really good job of explaining a bit of the tax situation that we are in.

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Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh would pay $7.

The eighth would pay $12.

The ninth would pay $18.

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. ‘Since you are all such good customers, he said, ‘I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).

The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

‘I only got a dollar out of the $20′, declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man,’ but he got $10!’

‘Yeah, that’s right’, exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!’

‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’

‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

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Does Joel Osteen think Jesus lived in victory?

August 21, 2008 at 10:50 am · Filed under Blog Response

I can’t say that I care much for the intro part of the video … I’m not sure that the state of the pulpit is RIP, but I do think that Mark Driscoll here does a good job of explaining why the message of Joel Osteen is at odds with not only the message of Jesus, but also the life of Jesus.

Let me first say that in this clip that Mark Driscoll shows of Joel Osteen preaching is the first time that I seem to think that Joel Osteen is trying to point people to God. There is so much that is true about what Osteen preaches. If we are believers in Christ’s work on the cross we are genuinely “children of God”. “We have royal blood flowing through our veins.” But Osteen seems to be confused regarding both:

1) The Center of the Message – The glory of God in the faithful perseverance of His children in the midst of suffering as they are preserved by the power of the Spirit in the hope of the promise that they have received in the work of Jesus of an eternal inheritance.

and

2) His Sense of Timing – The blessing that we have received in the present age is surety of the promise of a future eternal inheritance of which the Holy Spirit is a deposit.

AND YET … Osteen describes “complete victory” as three things that simply are not the key items of the gospel.

1) Healthy Body
2) Good Relationships
3) No Anxiety (especially as it relates to finances)

I would like to mention a few core problems with these three components coming together to be what the gospel describes as complete victory.

1) What does sin have to do with any of this? If there is no discussion of sin when we talk about victory then there is no need for the cross. When Jesus cried out that “It is finished” it was a cry of victory over sin’s curse and a claim of reconciliation between the redeemed and God.

2) This description slanders the thousands of saints and martyrs throughout history that have cried out “How long, Oh Lord,” as they suffered in their body and in their relationships and in their livelihood even to the point of death. Christ’s vindication of their cause is yet to come at the end of time.

3) Where is the need to persevere under trial or to intentionally place ourselves in the way of persecution for the sake of the gospel? It sounds as though I should avoid situations of persecution because I’m royalty after all.

4) And how should I pray for those who face persecution in places like China? Should I pray as they have asked, that they would endure and that the Good News of Jesus’ cross would be held up before even the persecutors? Or should I pray that God would make their bodies healthy, help them to make better friends, and that God would send them money so they wouldn’t have anxiety?

Bottom-line … I pray that I would see in Christ my own joy so that I can wear a smile as genuine as the appearance of Osteen. And yet I pray that God would hold before Osteen and Osteen would begin to hold before his church and the world the only source of eternal hope and present joy; that is, the God’s reconciling with man in the person and work of Jesus Christ. May we all become more holy worshippers of the One True God.

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