Phil 2

It seems that whenever there is a crisis in our capital markets, the obvious explanation for that is that the bankers are all greedy.  But this unprecedented collapse in the American fixed income markets has not, I believe, been brought about as a result of greed.  The problem is that we as a society have grown accustomed to assuming too much.

Many people think that the problems that we see in the capital markets are the result of subprime mortgage loans going bad.  They are not.  The problems in the capital markets are not that subprime mortgage loans have failed, but rather the problems we see are the consequences flowing from our collective assumption that it was impossible that subprime mortgage loans would fail at these levels.  Our major financial institutions assumed that subprime mortgage loans would not fail at such levels.  Financial institutions would assume that other similarly situated financial institutions would not fail.  Everyone assumed that the monoline bond insurers would not fail.  These assumptions were largely cemented through complicated financial instruments called “derivatives” in which each financial institution tied itself to the fate of the other financial institutions.  From a macro-economic perspective, this does have the benefit of diffusing risk throughout the whole system.  But when the capital markets as a whole made substantially wrong assumptions, instead of diffusing risk, these derivatives have the effect of bringing down the system like a set of dominoes.

For me, the lesson of the last year is that we as Americans assume too much.  We assume that we will not get a serious illness.  We assume that we will not die young.  We assume that we will live a reasonably comfortable economic existence.  We assume that there will always be a job for me out there.  We assume, assume and assume.

It is time that we, as Christians, recognize that there is nothing in all of creation that is certain.  For us, there is only One who is certain.

http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB121962333297467725.html

In today’s Wall Street Journal, one of the op-ed pieces opines that the principal reason why Latin America suffers from poverty is a general anti-business environment.  I respectfully disagree.  The principal reason for Latin American poverty is relationship.  In my experience in Latin America, there are two problems with their relationships.  First, people do not consider themselves to be equal to one another.  This occurs on a macro-governmental level.  Presidents and congressmen consider themselves to be of superior essence than the people over whom they rule.  But it happens just as viciously (if not more so) in the micro setting: rich over poor; employers over employees; husbands over wives.  One of the more gripping stories I heard about Latin American inequality I heard from a woman from El Salvador.  She related how could not convince anyone to give her a job because she was poor.  To our thinking, that is crazy.  If any one of those people ever gave her a job, she would no longer be poor.  But to them in that setting, it made perfect sense.  A person of higher social standing (and thereby higher perceived self worth) rejected the idea of  a woman escaping her destitute social standing (and thereby virtually no socially accepted worth).

The second problem is that those who hold power do so for the purpose of their own best interests and not the best interests over whom they exercise that power.  Now, this is really just an extension of the first problem.  We see this most obviously in the governmental context.  Politicians do not hold the power for the benefit of the people but rather for themselves. From their perspective, these things only make sense.  If they are worth more than the masses, then they are entitled to use that power for whatever they want.  These are the sources of corruption and oppression.  Consequently, they rob the public of their money and they rob people of their dignity.  But in my experience, the far more brutal expression of this twisted value is played out on the micro level:  rich brothers flaunting their wealth to their poor brothers; employers forcing poor women into sexually illicit relationships; and husbands lording every sense of power over their wives, including adultery and sexual and physical abuse.

Many people do not appreciate that the American vigilance against corruption and oppression really derives out of a firm belief in the shared equality of humanity.  This belief, in turn, can only be traced back to a fundamental Judeo-Christian ethic of how it is that humanity came to exist in the first instance (i.e, God made man a special creation in His image).  Our society does not suffer from these ills as much because it holds to this belief; however, reverse that belief here, and you will get the opposite result in society.  Establish that belief in Latin America and you will see a different Latin American experience.  But the one thing that does not change anything is if the United States just dumps more money in Latin America.

“Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:4-8).

Whenever I sin, I do the devil’s work. That is John’s point. John says, “He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning.” Now, John has already said in the first chapter of 1 John that we all sin. His point seems clear: whenever we sin we are injecting lawlessness into the world and we are serving as the agent of the devil. When we do this, we need to remember why Christ came into the world. It was that “He might destroy the works of the devil.” Thus, whenever we sin, regardless of how “small” the sin is, we are doing the devil’s work in the world and we are working against our Lord and Christ.

“But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” (1 John 1:7-2:2).

“Propitiation” is one of those big words we tend not to use in everyday Christian parlance. We approach the term from a “theological” sense in that we understand better how it is that we are “saved” or in Paul’s terms “justified.” But the Apostle John challenges our understanding of the term (I believe). John is not talking about justification or regeneration. Those that John is writing have already experienced regeneration. He calls them “little children.” Furthermore, John has a term he uses for regeneration in 1 John, which is to be “born of God.” No, John is not using the term “propitiation” is some highly technical theological sense, but in a very practical sense. John is not talking about what happened when we became children of God but what happens to us as children of God. This is all about how we live out the Christian walk. John appears to make (among others) these four points.

First, we are all going to sin. John says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Sin is a part of our daily Christian existence — there is no way around it. We will sin until God resurrects us into the image of Christ. We are stuck with sin as a reality in our lives.

Second, we must always “confess our sins….” That is, we can never get to the point where we do not agree with God that sin is sin. And, even for Bible-thumping Christians, this is a great temptation. No, we will acknowledge the big ones — yeah, those are sin. But we tend to gloss over what we perceive to be the little sins. The wrong glance here or there; the time we did not quite love that brother the way we should have; maybe the time we sowed seeds of discord and we now want to look back and revise the event to make it actually a highly spiritual event. But we cannot do this — we must always accept the fact that our sin is sin.

Third, we need to try to cut it out. John says, “My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin.” There is this odd tension in the book of 1 John between the reality that sin is a part of our lives and the mandate that it not be. We are in a struggle, indeed. But we must continue that struggle. We need to be (with the power of the Holy Spirit) rooting sin out of our lives on a daily basis.

Four, propitiation is how John resolves this horrible tension. We should not sin but we do. How do we ever maintain fellowship with God in this life? John’s answer: the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ covers us as much as Christians as when we became Christians. We need to start considering the term “propitiation” not as some technical term that explains the mechanics of when we became justified and regenerated and start considering it a daily necessity. Without it, there is no on-going fellowship with God. That is, propitiation is as much about sanctification as it is about justification.

I know that it is odd for my first post, but it is something that God has really spoken to me about lately. I do not think I really appreciated how the little sins in my life impacted my walk with God. Here is a passage that particularly impacted me along these lines:

“Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened,
That it cannot save;
Nor His ear heavy,
That it cannot hear.
But your iniquities have separated you from your God;
And your sins have hidden His face from you,
So that He will not hear.
For your hands are defiled with blood,
And your fingers with iniquity;
Your lips have spoken lies,
Your tongue has muttered perversity.

No one calls for justice,
Nor does any plead for truth.
They trust in empty words and speak lies;
They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch vipers’ eggs and weave the spider’s web;
He who eats of their eggs dies,
And from that which is crushed a viper breaks out.” Isaiah 59:1-5 (NKJV)

This passage struck me for three reasons. First, sin cuts us off from the activity of God in our lives. God’s hand is able to save and his ear is able to ear, but the reason why He did not save was because of sin. The text says that “your sins have hidden His face from you.”

Second, the people to whom these verses are addressed do not realize that the sin in their lives is having the effect of cutting off the saving hand and listening ear of God. Sin has the capacity not just to separate us from our God but also to delude us into thinking that our sin is not having that much impact in our relationship with God. We always seem to assume, when we sin, that we will be able to assess our condition as well after the sin as before. But sin has a great deluding affect on our minds.

Third, there is sort of the assumption that God ordinarily is highly active in our lives. Our God desires to save and to hear. Thus, the conspicuous absence of God’s activity can be a pretty good indicator of when we are sinning. This is not to say that if God does not answer this prayer or that prayer that some sin is causing God not to answer the prayer. But if God’s activity of shaping, forming and delivering a person is simply not present in his or her life, then that may in fact be evidence of sin.