What’s Happening to our Once-robust Economy?
Well, we all know what’s happening. Major corporations are folding, people are losing their jobs, houses are being foreclosed on in record numbers, people who’ve never needed public assistance now do, and our overall standard of living is declining on a daily basis. No one knows where the bottom is, or how long a come-back will take, if that ever happens. Some of the companies who made our great, vibrant economy what it once was, either no longer exist or are in serious financial trouble. We’ve tried just about every trick in the book; reducing interest rates, bailouts and stimulus packages. Nothing’s helped, despite the best efforts of our greatest financial analysts and wizards. The question is: What’s really happening to our economy? If you went to the same restaurant for years, ate great food and came out feeling fine, then, as the restaurant deteriorated you kept coming out sick after every meal, would you think your ailment stemmed from this restaurant? Of course. Would you have to be a doctor or virologist to come to this conclusion? Certainly not. All you’d need is a half a brain. What’s the one other thing in our society that’s been deteriorating in lock step with and in almost the exact same proportions as our economy? Ethics and morality. Even diseases are sometimes tracked down through nothing more than logical associations. It was that initial connection between Legionnaires’ Disease and the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, for example, that eventually led to the source of Legionnaires’ Disease. If we were to track down what’s ailing our economy in the same way scientists track down some diseases, moral and ethical decay would stick out like a soar thumb. And you don’t have to be a religious person to make this connection. We’ve been through recessions and depressions before, but nothing like this one. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Sunday, September 14, 2008: The depressed state of our economy is a “once in a half century, probably once in a century, type of event. ” If our moral values of yesteryear, when the economy was relatively stable, were far superior than they are today, and our moral values today, when “coincidentally” our economy is in a state of unprecedented upheaval, are at an unprecedented low, you think there might be a connection? There seems to be no other common thread. Strangely, our predicament has an eerie resemblance to a story in the Bible — Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden and their standard of living radically reduced. I’m not saying there’s a connection; that would be ridiculous. But you have to admit the resemblance is uncanny, albeit our circumstances are on a much larger scale. What sets today’s decadence apart from that of yesteryear is that some decadent behavior today is no longer seen as wrong. In some cases, people are even proud of their decadence. There’s probably little need to point out the areas in which morality and ethics have declined in recent years; I’m sure we can all come up with lists. But I would like to point out two areas that epitomize the problem. Having babies out of wedlock is no longer the shame and stigma it once was. In the 1950s a movie or rock star who had a child out of wedlock created a scandal. Today, it’s announced with beaming pride. It even turns into a delightful guessing game — who’s the father? The lack of outrage by the public shows how ingrained this acceptance has become among Americans. I understand, we live in a more enlightened age and we’re a whole lot smarter then previous generations. We certainly can’t go back to those ignorant days of yesteryear. But if we’re so much smarter and more enlightened, how come we can’t figure our way out of the deep financial mess we’re in? This is not being facetious; this is a legitimate question. People who are smarter are usually able to figure out things that less intelligent people can’t — that’s what intelligence is. Many previous generations lived in relative comfort and luxury; we’re losing homes, jobs, nest eggs, worrying about putting food on the table, and we can’t figure out how to get out of it. Are we really smarter, or has our arrogance simply led us to blindness and stupidity? The other glaring difference between today and years gone by is the widespread acceptance of homosexuality as just another lifestyle. What’s worse, gays have parades proclaiming how proud they are of their decadence. If you told someone only 50 years ago that this would one day be the case, they’d laugh in your face. And the public’s attitude toward this? “Well, everyone’s got their rights. “First, I find the public’s acquiescence to this abomination absolutely mind-boggling. Gays will have a parade anywhere they can swing it. Should you object on the basis that you don’t want your family or kids exposed to this, it’s doubtful gays would give a rat’s you know what. Gays will selfishly push their agenda on you, your family, your kids, your kids’ schools, whenever and wherever possible, regardless of how you feel about it and regardless of your right to bring up your family as you see fit. And the average American is okay with this? This is just weakly caving in to others’ demands. If such behavior were imposed on us by a tyrant government, we’d be up in arms. But if it’s an “enlightened” perversion, that’s okay. Gays have all the rights other citizen have. They can get jobs, start businesses, rent apartments and get (traditionally) married, like everyone else. We do not need laws to accommodate the lifestyles of people who like sleeping with the same sex, sheep or inflatable dolls. And we certainly don’t need them pushing their perversions down our throats. The public’s acceptance of this abomination, with the often heard words, “They have their rights,” is little more than gutless, spineless passivity. We have as much right to our lifestyle as they think they have to theirs. How would you feel about a parade through your neighborhood of fathers and daughters or mothers and sons who are proud that they live together as couples? Probably not very supportive. How about if they were all consenting adults, didn’t hurt anyone, were so happy together, and just wanted to bring up a normal, loving family together? You’ve got to admit, these are some pretty noble intentions. To most Americans, though, this probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. Aren’t we just a bunch of intolerant bigots and hatemongers — we have so much hatred and intolerance for fathers, mothers, sons and daughters? Could this be an issue of morality? Well, what’s morality? That’s a good question: what is morality, anyway? What makes one thing immoral and another thing, like washing dishes, for example, not immoral. After all, incest — among consenting adults, of course — has the potential of bringing blissful happiness to some family members. Washing dishes, on the other hand, only goes so far in bringing happiness to another family member. So shouldn’t incest be more moral than washing dishes? The answer is that morality has nothing to do with what makes you happy or how noble your intentions are. Morality was not invented by humans. Morality has no other origin but the Bible. Accepting any traditionally immoral act as “moral” essentially does away with the entire system of morality, since there is no discernable difference between their underlying principles. Homosexuality has always been around. But what makes it so galling today is that what has been traditionally considered an abomination has turned into an acceptable lifestyle, and supporting it has turned into a “noble” cause. How perverted has our society become? In light of what we consider acceptable today, it makes one wonder how Sodom and Gomorrah got such a bad wrap. Of course, you’ll always find people who don’t believe in this Biblical stuff. But what surprises me is how many people do believe in God yet never entertain the thought that what they do — in terms of right and wrong — has a direct impact on the events in their lives. God is not part of our democracy; He didn’t ask you if you want to be born, He won’t ask you when it’s time to go, and He obviously didn’t ask anyone when it was time to bring prosperity levels down a few notches. A correlation between the decline of ethics and morality and the collapse of our economy is hard to deny. Sure you can attribute our economic problems to corporate or governmental mismanagement and go into the intimate details of what mistakes CEOs or officials made. You didn’t expect God to come down with a bunch of angel/accountants to throw things out of kilter, did you? The way it unfolded is the way it happens. A belief in God and the basic tenets of the Bible alone do not make for a religion. We don’t have to worry that having laws based on Biblical values will make for a “government-sponsored religion. ” Using time-tested principles to lay down the foundation for a society is as practical as collecting taxes. Societies that frown upon Biblical values, like Communist states, for example, will usually allow themselves to perpetrate gross human rights violations, in many cases killing people with little more concern then killing animals. On the other hand, when the Bible’s tenets are perverted, you can wind up with “religions” that condone murder. Neither the Ten Commandments nor the Old Testament (the root of most major religions) sanctions murder. The seeds for our current decline were planted as far back as 1962, when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the Union Free School District No. 9 in Hyde Park, New York, had violated the First Amendment by directing the Districts’ principles to cause the following prayer to be said aloud in class: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country. ” Isn’t it ironic that things have gotten so bad today that it seems as if the only one who can help us is God? It’s almost as if God is talking to us. Maybe we’re just not listening. The way I see it, we have the choice of fighting either one of two battles. We can fight the battle to save our economy, which we’re already fighting, in futility. Or we can fight the battle to restore previous levels of ethics, morality and integrity. The difference is, if we win the latter, we win both battles; there’s a scriptural axiom: Do God’s will, and He will do yours.