Zach’s Theological Musings

  If the Great American and Worldwide Economic Collapse doesn’t happen in the next few weeks, then it is just being put off for future date. The current economic “crisis” is not a random fluke, or a series of unfortunate events, or merely the fault of greedy and foolish CEOs on Wall Street. The whole stock market system, even in its better days, is a house of cards just waiting to crash under the weight of the massive selfish dreams that arguably all participants hoist upon it. Allow me to explain. First, some brief and basic background for those to whom the stock exchange is a big mystery.

  We all know about loans and interest. Someone gives you a chunk of money up front for some need or desire that you have, and you gradually pay the amount back plus some additional percentage for the priviledge of having received the entire chunk at the time when you needed or wanted it. [In the Law of Moses, the Hebrews were forbidden from charging interest to their countrymen, although they were allowed to charge interest to foreigners (Deut 23:19-20). The main reason for the prohibition against charging interest appears to be God’s compassion for the poor amongst His people (Ex 22:25). I believe a principled application of this today is to view the interest charged on “luxury loans” (like mortgages on American-sized houses) as an acceptable practice; however, we as Christians should lend freely to those who are truly in need, expecting nothing in return (Luke 6:34-35), and should oppose interest and financial burdens that oppress the poor (Deut 24:14). But these issues are not our focus at the moment.]

  Banks loan money to many people. Bonds are essentially the same thing in reverse. A bond is a kind of a loan funded by many people for an organization (like a company or even a government). You give money to the organization to support something it wants to do, perhaps expand business into a new area, and the organization either gradually, or at some fixed point in time (agreed to in advance) pays back your money plus interest. If everything goes well, everybody wins. The organization is able to use the money you and all of the other bond holders gave them to expand business and make even more money, and thus in essence, through the interest paid back you gain a share of the rewards.

  Stocks can be thought of as bonds that don’t have a fixed pay back amount or pay back date. You purchase stock in a company and, generally, the more successful the company is, the more they pay you back (through what are called “dividends”). If the investment doesn’t turn out so successful, then the organization doesn’t pay you back as much. Instead of getting paid back a fixed percentage of how much you invested, you get paid back proportionate to how successful the new venture actually is. Makes sense, right? With stocks, you also essentially “own” a piece of the company; you get voting rights in decisions that are made. This is important for rich, big players in the stock market world, but in practice it is not very significant for the average guy.

  So far so good. On an abstract level it sounds fine. I think stocks and bonds make a lot of sense in theory, and are not inherently immoral. Effectively you say, “Here, I believe in what you are trying to do. I’ll go in with you on the risk of the investment. If the idea works, we’ll share the benefits. If it doesn’t, we’ll share the losses.”

  But now enter trading into the picture, and the reality of human nature starts to darken things dramatically. What happens when I buy a stock in a company, their performance is less than I hoped or expected, and thus my financial returns are disappointing? Well, in practice what happens is that you hope you can find someone who will buy that under-performing stock from you at a price which is higher than what you expect to get out of holding on to the stock yourself. Very quickly, the stock market becomes the stock exchange. Stocks are moving rapidly from one “investor” to the next. It is no longer a matter of, “I believe in this company, I’m going to invest in them and share the risk, share the profits and share the losses,” but rather it is entirely a game of, “I’m going to stick with this investment and get the most out of it as long as I expect things to go well, but when I start to think that things don’t look so good I’m going to dump it off on someone else.” (Hmmm, sounds remarkably like the American dating and marriage scene.)

  “So, Zach, what is the problem?,” you ask. If I am tired of Susan, oops, I mean Stock A, and you are ready to give Stock A a try, then why shouldn’t I sell it to you? It is a mutal decision between consenting adults, right? I’m ready to sell Stock A, you are ready to buy it, so I sell it to you. Isn’t that how just how all markets in this world work? Well, not quite.

  You see, if I go downtown to the farmers’ market, I find crates of apples and peaches. The farmers labored long and hard to tend their orchards, harvest the crops, and transport their produce to a location near my home. In the process the farmer also incurred many expenses. I give him money and he gives me fruit. It is a good trade. We are both happy and WILL CONTINUE to be happy about the trade with no regrets in the future. We both worked hard at our jobs in order to gain something useful (apples in his case, cash in mine). He has more apples than he needs, and not enough cash. I have more cash than I need, and not enough apples. We trade, and we both are the better for it.

  With stock exchanges, at least one person in the chain is mathematically guaranteed to end up disappointed. There are positive numbers and there are negative numbers. If you end up getting more returns out of the stock than what you paid, you are happy. If you end up getting less than what you paid, you are sad. When the farmer brings his apples to the market, his is injecting added value into the system. In contrast, in the day-to-day busyness of the stock exchange, there are no goods or services being produced! It is a zero-sum game. [Some people will disagree with me on that, and technically they are right. However, in the reality of how things work, the system is close enough to a zero-sum game that speaking of it as such is a perfectly valid approximation.] The only way I can win is for someone else to lose. Put another way, if a stock purchase between you and me is “good” for me then that means it is “bad” for you, and vice versa. (Yes, exceptions to this rule can be imagined, but I stand by these statements as accurate representations of general trends and the reality of the way the system works, as opposed to theoretical abstractions.)

  To put it yet another way, what you really hope for in the stock exchange is to be able to capitalize on stupid people. If you buy a stock from someone, you are hoping that they are making a mistake. You are hoping that the price is going to shoot up and you are going to get the benefit for yourself, while the previous owner looks on with a sullen face and deep regret.

  So, no, the stock exchange is not like other ways of making money. When I work hard for my boss and he pays me wages, I don’t wish for his stupidity or his failure, nor he for mine. In fact, both of us are better off if neither of us is stupid and if both of us succeed. When I buy groceries at the store, it is not a matter of my gain in exchange for someone else’s loss, or vice versa. But the stock market, for all practical purposes, is a quest to profit through someone else’s misfortune or mistake.

  But then, you may ask, if my interpretation of the stock exchange is correct, then what about the apparent mathematical-miracle we observe that most people gain on the stock market, and net profits for all participants seem to significantly exceed net losses? Here is an analogy. As with all analogies, it is not perfect; and I have taken some poetic liberties. But please just hear the main point. Say that a bunch of us are gathered together in a room, and we all have some cash in our wallets. I find a scrap of paper on the floor and have a bright idea. “This is a magic piece of paper,” I tell you, “I’ll sell it to you for $5.” Deal. You go to the next guy, “This is a magic piece of paper, I’ll sell it to you for $10.” Deal. You got back the $5 that you gave to me, and made $5 of your own. The next guy sells the magic piece of paper for $15, the next guy sells it for $20, or $22, or $30, or whatever. The point is, as the price keeps going up, everybody makes money! Hooray! (Sound like any spam emails you have received lately? Yep, in terms of mathematics and virture, the stock market system is no different from those schemes.) The problem is, the selling of the “magic” piece of paper at higher and higher prices can’t continue forever. Just like musical chairs, one person is always left holding the paper. You hope that you aren’t the last guy in the chain. At some point, someone is not going to be able to sell the paper for a higher price than what he paid for it. But the thing is, what does the guy do who paid $200 for the “magical” piece of paper? He’s going to say, “Well maybe I can sell it for $190 and at least recoup most of my losses.” The next guy comes to the same realization and sells it for $180. At some point, the “magical” piece of paper is old and worn at tattered and crumbles to pieces. The last guy left holding it simply loses the $70 that he paid for a piece of junk and vows to be more shrewd next time. In summary, one guys lost $70, several guys lost $10, and together they subsidised all the people who made $5 or $10 by passing the “magic” paper from one person to the next.

  Taking this analogy into the realm of the real stock exchange: stock prices can’t go up forever. Every company, like every human being, has to die at some point. Market crashes happen. Massive organizations suddenly go under. Mathematically, every dollar and cent ever gained by any individual has to be matched by an equal dollar and cent lost by another individual. Perhaps the big winners and the big losers are separated by decades. Perhaps everyone can be a “winner” for one, or two, or three generations. But eventually everything has to net to zero. Whoever is left standing when the music stops foots the bill for everyone else who came before. In other words, those who are stock holders when the stock crashes INEVITABLY come are the ones who pay the bill for those who saw great gains in the previous decades. Perhaps the next cycle of accounting and balancing out is now upon us.

  I have taken a moral (and secondarily, financial) stand against the stock exchange for several years now on the basis that in an essentially closed system, everything ultimately has to add up to zero. Some people have made light of my interpretation, and my simplistic mathematical model, of the stock exchange, but I hope that in light of recent events many people will see and understand this perspective and take it seriously. The way you make money through the stock exchange is either:

1. By getting a good stock at a low price and thus essentially saying to the person who sold it to you, “Sorry buddy, you made a big mistake, didn’t you?,” or
2. By helping to blow up an artificial economic bubble that eventually MUST burst — perhaps very soon, or perhaps in an upcoming generation.

  An economy that rests on this kind of my-gain-for-someone-else’s-loss stock exchange is not a healthy economy. It is not godly by any stretch of the imagination, but even in terms of mere secular pragmatism and mathematics this kind of system can’t hold up forever. It is destined for failure. The best you can hope for in this kind of system is that the inevitable Great Economic Collapse doesn’t happen in your lifetime. Of course, in doing so you are hoping that it happens to your children or grandchildren instead.

  I urge you, dear Christian friend, let us store up our investments safely and securely in heaven (Matt 6:19-22); then we will be free to live as those who reside in a kingdom that cannot be shaken (Heb 12:28). And if the current U.S. band-aid economic plan somehow manages to avert total economic collapse and keep the worm infested shell of the stock market running for another temporary period of time, I urge you to see the stock exchange as unloving way to relate to your neighbor. The problems run much deeper than regulatory reforms and executive salary caps can even begin to touch. To “succeed” financially based on someone else’s loss is to fail morally, even if you do so on a much smaller scale than the “bad guy” CEOs.

  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Zach, I appreciate your heart on this matter, I appreciate your desire to do something about this issue, I’m just not sure that your approach is the best approach.” The issue in question, and the “approach” in question, could be any one of a number of different things I have done over the years, although inevitably this conversation arises when the issue is a highly “sensitive” topic like Muslim evangelization or action on abortion.

  My response:

  AWESOME! If you have a better approach, then truly that is awesome. Go for it. I want to encourage you to go whole hog after your idea and your approach. As long as it isn’t sinful, that is.

  And as long as my idea and my approach aren’t sinful, I’ll probably keep pursuing it. Because I want to use the gifts and talents that God has given me. My way not be best for others, but it may be best according to the way that God made me. And who knows, when I see your way I may even be drawn to it and switch over.

  If your or my approach is sinful, let’s be sure to try to correct each other. If we don’t judge each other’s method to be sinful, then let us encourage rather than discourage each other (1 Thes 5:11-14).

  It is not uncommon for Western Christians, if they pray anything regarding persecution, to pray for an end to the persecution of the church in closed countries (some would say that 1 Tim 2 supports this kind of prayer). Occasionally, you’ll meet someone who says they pray for persecution in America, out of a desire to see the church of God in a comfortable, affluent society receive some of the refining that it desperately needs (see, e.g. 1 Peter 1:6-8, Rev 3:15ff).

  So which is it? Should we pray for persecution, or against it? Perhaps both. I used to have a pastor who (if I recall correctly) said that he prayed for comfort for the afflicted and affliction for the comfortable. That seems to me to be a reasonable balance with Biblical support behind it (e.g. 2 Cor 1:3:7, Amos 6, Luke 7:31ff, Micah 2-4, etc.).

  However, I must say that if ever I did specifically pray for persecution, I don’t anymore. It is not something I would want to wish on anybody. However, I do pray for things which I know very well will most certainly lead to persecution. For example, I pray that God would reveal and resensitize my conscience and yours for any ways in which we fail to truly and completely live godly lives in Christ Jesus. I don’t pray for persecution, I pray for godly living; but I know from the Bible that genuine, wholehearted godly living will result in persecution (2 Tim 3:12). Therefore, short of the final return of Jesus Christ, I also have a very hard time praying that persecution would end entirely, because if the Bible is true (it is) then that would contradict my prayer for greater and greater godly living.

  Brother Nick has provided the following quote:

 We have also come to understand that the past thirty years of suffering, persecution and torture for the house churches in China were all part of God’s training for us. The Lord has perfectly fitted us to go as missionaries to the Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu worlds.
  Once I spoke in the West and a  Christian told me, “I’ve been praying for years that the Communist government in China would collapse, so Christians can live in freedom.” This is not what we pray! We never pray against our government or call down curses on them. Instead, we have learned that God is in control of both our own lives and the government we live under. Isaiah prophesied about Jesus, “The government will be on his shoulders.” Isaiah 9:6.
  God has used China’s government for his own purposes, moulding and shaping his children as he sees fit. Instead of focusing our prayers against any political system, we pray that regardless of what happens to us, we will be pleasing to God.
  Don’t pray for the persecution to stop! Wed shouldn’t pray for a lighter load to carry, but a stronger back to endure! Then the world will see that God is with us, empowering us to live in a way that reflects his love and power.
  That is true freedom!
  There is little that any of the Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu countries can do to us that we haven’t already experienced in China. The worst they can do is kill us, but all that means is that we will be promoted into the glorious presence of our Lord for all eternity.

“The Heavenly Man: the remarkable true story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun” pp. 286-287

  So, in summary I have offered two suggestions. Either pray for and against persecution, or pray neither for nor against persecution — focus rather on praying for godliness in whatever situation the Sovereign Lord has ordained for us. Either choice, it seems to me, provides a balance that is lacking in any single, one-sided view of persecution.

  2 Timothy 3:12:

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

So then the natural question is why are we in America (for example), not experiencing any persecution?

  Now, to be sure, there is such a thing in Biblical language as a “time of peace” (Acts 9:31). The verse above doesn’t say that the godly ones will necessarily constantly face persecution. If I am not facing persecution right now, we cannot conclude from the Bible that I am not living a godly life right now. I could be enjoying a time of peace for which it is right to give thanks.

  But… on the other hand, if almost our entire Christian sub-culture (in America, for example) goes week after week, month after month, year after year, and decade after decade without facing any real persecution arising from a godly life in Christ Jesus, then hmmmm, it does make you stop and wonder. Is it a really llllooonnnggg period of peace that God has granted us, or it is perhaps that I am not actually living a godly life in Christ Jesus?

Two years ago in Ermelo, Holland, Brother Andrew told the story of sitting in Budapest, Hungary, with a dozen pastors of that city teaching them from the Bible. In walked an old friend, a pastor from Romania who had recently been released from prison. Brother Andrew said that he stopped teaching and knew that it was time to listen.

After a long pause the Romanian pastor said, “Andrew, are there any pastors in prison in Holland?” “No,” he replied. “Why not?” the pastor asked. Brother Andrew thought for a moment and said, “I think it must be because we do not take advantage of all the opportunities God gives us.”

Then came the most difficult question. “Andrew, what do you do with 2 Timothy 3:12?” Brother Andrew opened his Bible and turned to the text and read aloud, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” He closed the Bible slowly and said, “Brother, please forgive me. We do nothing with that verse.”

 [Taken from the foreword to Herbert Schlossberg, Called to Suffer, Called to Triumph, (Portland: Multnomah Press, 1990), pp. 9-10., as quoted in John Piper’s sermon “Called to Suffer and Rejoice: For Holiness and Hope“]

    You see, at any given time, in any given culture of this world, it is generally possible to obey large portions of the Scripture without offending or angering the fallen pagan world around us. But then there is always that one little point. That one command of God, which when obeyed wholeheartedly ignites the wrath of the Christ-hating world. So the Devil makes a deal with the professing church of Christ, “Tell you what. You just hold back in this one little area, just cut these few portions out of your Bible here and there, and I’ll leave you alone. You can have your churches, live your Christian life, etc., etc., just stay off this one piece of ground that belongs to me.” (Here is an example.) This is how Martin Luther put it:

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point. (Luther’s Works. Weimar Edition. Briefwechsel [Correspondence], vol. 3, pp. 81f.)

  And this is how Jesus put it:

I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first. Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): Only hold on to what you have until I come. To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations-

He will rule them with an iron scepter;
he will dash them to pieces like pottery’-

just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

  In Thyatira the stumbling point was sexual immorality and idolatry. Satan came to the church of Thyatira with some so-called “deep secrets”. We don’t know what those deep secrets were, but apparently in one form or another they basically amounted to this, “Look! You can be a fornicating, adulterous, idol-worshipping Christian! It is the best of both worlds! You get heaven, you get forgiveness with Jesus, and you get a lot of romping orgy fun in the meantime! This is the real deal! Don’t settle for anything less! You deserve the best!”

  The church did indeed have genuine love, faith, service, perseverance, and good deeds (as do we). Jesus saw those things and commended them. But He was also very, very angry, and promised certain punishment upon those who did not repent of that one thing that He had against them.

  The church in America (to use one example) is no doubt doing many things that are Biblically right, and rightfully refraining from many things that are Biblically wrong. But are there one or two points where we have made a deal with the devil? Could it be that we have fallen into, “profess[ing] with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at [this] moment attacking”? Could it be that the reason we don’t face persecution is because our definition of “a godly life is Christ Jesus” follows the Bible only so far, and then stops right where Satan has drawn a line in the sand? Yes, it very well could.

  Apart from whatever political, pastoral, or other related opinions you or I might have, it is really great to see the love of the Palin family for their son/brother Trig put repeatedly in the media spotlight.

  I at first intended to go a more positive direction with this blog post; more on that below. But while searching the internet for related material I came across some disturbing  — not necessarily surprising, but nevertheless disturbing — results from scientific studies. And part of loving the weak and defenseless requires speaking out against the cruel and ruthless. So… did you know that 92% of children diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome while still in the womb are chopped up into pieces and sucked out of the birth canal with a baby crushing vaccum, or face a similar fate by other means? At least that is what we hear (in slightly more subtle language) according to a recent study:

Termination rates after prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, spina bifida, anencephaly, and Turner and Klinefelter syndromes: a systematic literature review
Authors: Caroline Mansfield, Suellen Hopfer, Theresa M. Marteau
Prenatal Diagnosis
Volume 19 Issue 9, Pages 808 - 812
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract:

The aims of this systematic literature review are to estimate termination rates after prenatal diagnosis of one of five conditions: Down syndrome, spina bifida, anencephaly, and Turner and Klinefelter syndromes, and to determine the extent to which rates vary across conditions and with year of publication. Papers were included if they reported (i) numbers of prenatally diagnosed conditions that were terminated, (ii) at least five cases diagnosed with one of the five specified conditions, and (iii) were published between 1980 and 1998. 20 papers were found which met the inclusion criteria. Termination rates varied across conditions. They were highest following a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome (92 per cent; CI: 91 per cent to 93 per cent) and lowest following diagnosis of Klinefelter syndrome (58 per cent; CI: 50 per cent to 66 per cent). Where comparisons could be made, termination rates were similar in the 1990s to those reported in the 1980s. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  Here’s another study from 1978. I could be mistaken, and my apologies to the author if I am misunderstanding his language, but the abstract below seems to celebrate the “effectiveness” of abortion “in reducing the incidence of severe mental retardation.”

Title: Decline of Down’s syndrome after abortion reform in New York state. 
Author: HANSEN H
Source citation: American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 1978 Sep;83(2):185-188.
Abstract:

The report estimates the impact of the 1970 abortion reform on the occurrance of Down’s syndrome in New York State. The New York legislature removed restrictions on induced abortions during the first 2 trimesters of pregnancy. The sources of data were: 1) 2 series of newborns from the WHO Comparative Study of Congenital Malformations, 2) Jerusalem Perinatal study, and 3) 2 series from the U.S. Colaborative Perinatal Project. The maternal age-specific incidence from the 5 data sources were applied to the number of pregnancies in each maternal age group supplied by the New York State and City Departments of Health. In 1968 and 1969 the number of expected cases remained stable (383 and 379, respectively), and following the 1970 abortion reform the expected frequency dropped from 331 cases in 1971 and 293 cases in 1972. The decline in incidence of Down’s syndrome was attributable to an increase of induced abortions rather than a decrease of pregnancies, especially in New York City and in the older maternal age groups (35 or older). In the 5 years after abortion reform, the proportion of pregnancies terminated rose during the first 3 years and then stabilized. In the same time period, the estimated number of births with Down’s syndrome declined by 20 percent. The decline in Down’s syndome in New York State cannot be attributed entirely to the abortion reform, although the abortion reform was effective in reducing the incidence of severe mental retardation [emphasis added].

  In addition to the important fact that man was made in God’s image, and destroying the image is an affront against God Himself, I believe that another reason that genuine disciples of Christ place a high value on all human life, including (even especially) the frail, weak, helpless, so-called “useless”, and disabled, is that we see ourselves in such as these. In fact, I mean that in two ways. First, many of the literally, physically weak, helpless, and disabled are precisely those whom God has chosen and called to Himself. He uses the weak and the things of the world that “are not” to shame the strong and the things that are (1 Cor 1).  He does this to display His power and so that no man may have any reason to boast.

  Second, even if we are not physically or mentally disabled (as measured by society), a disciple of Christ is someone who realizes that in ourselves we were utterly blind, deaf, dumb, and hopelessly unable to do anything to help ourselves. Indeed, we were born dead in sin (Eph 2:1). When we see someone who is dependent, someone who can’t make it on their own, someone who is in constant need of care and help, we don’t say like the pagans, “Oh what a burden on society, they need to be exterminated,” but rather we say, “Ya, … that’s me.”