Does thinking about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch give you the eco-jitters? Do you shudder at the thought of the world running out of space for landfill? Worry no more. We finally have the answer.
During the 2008 election campaign, I remember being chastised for suggesting that a McCain/Palin administration was the best choice off a “bad-or-worse” menu. As Doug Wilson put it, it was a choice between heading for the cliff at 5mph or 100mph.
The Bible is full of food and money, and not just because God speaks to us using things we understand. Eating and working and spending wisely are glorifying to God. Our economics flows from our worship. Cultus begets culture, always. Doug Wilson writes:
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Our nation’s public economists usually refer to you in your capacity as consumer. This is in contrast to previous and wiser eras, when citizens were thought of as producers, and as savers. But we have departed from the way, and when disaster strikes, one of the things we think to do, is spend our way out of it. Republicans want to spend out way out this way, and Democrats that way, but we all think that consumption is king. Our understanding of consuming has become deranged.
Gary North has a free course on reducing your debt. Part of the plan is an application of the 5-point Covenant structure. Basically, God calls a man, gives him a job to do, and returns at the end to assess the man’s work. North refers to the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:
I saw in my dream, that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand again, and led him into a very dark room, where there sat a man in an iron cage. Now the man seemed very sad. He sat with his eyes looking down to the ground, and his hands folded together, and he sighed as if his heart would break.
Then said Christian, “Who is this?”
“Talk with him and see,” said the Interpreter.
“What used you to be?” asked Christian.
“I was once a flourishing professor, both in my own eyes, and also in the eyes of others,” answered the man. “I was on my way, as I thought, to the Celestial City and I was confident that I would get there.”
“But what did you do to bring yourself to this condition?” Christian asked.
“I failed to keep watch,” the man replied. “I followed the pleasures of this world, which promised me all manner of delights. But they proved to be an empty bubble. And now I am shut up in this iron cage—a man of despair who can’t get out.”
No further explanations were given. No one said who put him there. But the Interpreter whispered to Christian:
“Bear well in mind what you have seen.” [1]
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Another thought related to the ideas in Behind Closed Doors.
The whole aim of the construction process, whether in sex, foetal development, education, business, art, music, family or state government, is the ultimate revelation of a mature glory. We are given the opportunity to create, and that involves certain God-given freedoms. If the freedoms are abused, what we construct for ourselves is a cage. Lust is a cage. A dysfunctional family or state is a cage. Enforced egalitarian socio-economics is a cage. Undisciplined children are a cage.
Jesus laid down His life for this world, and the freedoms of western culture have been a direct outcome. In its final stages, we have rebelliously inverted each of these freedoms (including the economic ones) and turned both our Christian protection (including our God-given wealth) and Christian mandate into a cage. Ancient Israel did the same. Why does this inversion process seem such a logical path for fallen human nature?
A brilliant thought (I think) from shotgun over at the AV forum:
I’m currently reading Gary North’s commentary on Genesis, “The Dominion Covenant.” It is probably one of the most enlightening books I’ve ever read, especially in terms of economics.
Anyway, I ran across some ideas that might serve to savage any and all attempts to intertwine the Genesis account with modern theories of evolution. (Gary North doesn’t apply these conclusions in this way. This speculation is all Shotgun.)
Gary North says this:
Under covenantal dominion, cursed nature’s restraints are progressively lifted. (Pg. 84)
He claims earlier that the “Earth was never designed to be autonomous.”
It seems to me that those who would posit long periods of time before man arose (as man) are implying that the Earth (and nature without man) has some sort of autonomous purpose apart from man. Implicit then, in systems like those of Hugh Ross, is the assumption of an autonomous sphere of sovereignty allocated to nature.
This cannot be true since there is no neutrality. In seeking to critique theistic evolutionary models, then, we should be on the lookout for any implications of an autonomous wilderness.
“…Another example of [the state] straining towards the divine attributes can be seen in the recent attempts by Obama through the U.S. Treasury to create wealth ex nihilo. But only God can create wealth that way. God spoke the word, and mind-boggling resources were instantly there. And God formed our first parents, and gave them the responsibility for stewarding those resources. That is the authority of the divine — He speaks, and it is. And blinkered statists want to be able to do that. They should be able to speak, and it is “there.” And so they speak, and what was there begins to vanish away. Jezebel brings in the fertility Baal to make Israel lush and green, and the first thing that happens is that Israel turns brown and crispy.”
Douglas Wilson, The Jitney Gods of Washington
Adam Smith was a true son of Adam when he wrote these famous words in Chapter 2 of The Wealth of Nations (1776).
But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
The motivation here is clear: “More for me in history.”
Bible Matrix blog
