The Government as God
Oct 15, 2008
These are crazy days for our financial markets, which are experiencing volatile swings daily in different directions, though mostly moving down. Things are so crazy that I was watching The View the other day. I know, I know, The View. But before anyone rushes to revoke my man credentials, let me assure you that I am no regular viewer of this show. Keep in mind that when I saw this brief snippet of TV, I was 1) in the gym working out with other manly men, 2) I was sweating a lot as tough men tend to do, and 3) did I mention that I like contact sports, large trucks, and hunting? Anyway, I caught just a few minutes of this program, which if you don’t know it, is basically 4-5 angry women who spend the better part of two hours demonstrating how little they know about any and everything—politics, the world, the environment, entertainment, showbiz, economics, sociology, underwater basket weaving; you name it and they don’t know it! But I digress. What they showed on this particular day was several clips of Whoopi Goldberg, offering different versions of her plan to fix the housing market.
Her proposal goes like this: “I think the
When Whoopi said this, I almost broke the exercise machine. My thought was, “who the heck do you think the government is?” She talks as if the government is this personal, all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful entity who can simply wave the magic wand of ‘amnesty’ over our mortgages and make all the pain go away. Again, it doesn’t matter whether you like the policy or not, I’m not concerned with that right now. What matters is having a Savior-like, knight on a white horse view of our government. As Martin Luther told the Pope in 1517, if you have the power to forgive sins, then why would you not empty purgatory and hell completely? And if the government has the kind of power to grant ‘amnesty’ then why not just knock off the entire credit balance and then all the student loan balances, and then all the car loans, and definitely don’t forget the credit card bills! In fact, let’s just have a system where the government gives us every luxury and we never have to work or pay for anything! You’re probably thinking that now I’m just being silly. You’d be right but we also all need to notice that the government possesses no magical wand, nor is ‘amnesty’ free. If the government did follow this advice, then it would cost them money too, money that would have to come from somewhere. It does not simply happen because the government says so. The money would have to be either printed (in which case inflation would drastically increase, basically a tax hike in the form of inflation), borrowed (from another country, bank, or independent investors in which case someone has to eventually pay it back with interest), taxed (from the paychecks of citizens which seems counterproductive since you’re trying to give them money) or found (in the form of across the board spending cuts in other programs).
Whether or not you think these are appropriate measures for our government to take, it is not appropriate to view the government as the all-powerful Savior who can simply offer us amnesty if it so chooses with no other repercussions. No, only the real God can do that, and all this turmoil and panic has made me wonder where our trust really is right now? Fortunately the real God has done that, but it wasn’t free for Him either; it cost him the death of His Son on a Roman cross. A God who has paid so dearly is the only God we can trust in times of crisis. “He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8.32)” Who are you trusting right now?
