The other day I got my annual Social Security Statement. Is there anybody who really believes in this any more? How many don’t know there is no such thing as any actual accounts with money in your name? Yes, some folks are getting those monthly checks. For now. In a couple of months the whole thing may be out the window. There is already no money in any Social Security Trust fund, just a few billions in IOUs, imaginary numbers. The monthly checks are paid out of the current accounts, all of which are so deep in the hole, there is no way for human minds to get a picture of it.
This, along with the Veterans Administration stuff is considered the sacrosanct, you-don’t-mess-with-this, covered-in-screaming-red-flag-warnings area of federal budgeting. Except, Congress has messed with it and simply lied about it. So in the next couple of months when the dollar dies, and the economy crashes, that check — if it still comes in — will mean next to nothing. I suppose it’s possible we will be handed over directly to the coming regional or world government, and perhaps they will amuse themselves by honoring these “commitments” in some fashion. It won’t be the same, whatever it will be.
Do you recall the situation for widows in the Bible? It was always pretty bad. Most women married fellows 10-20 years older, and it was common for them to outlive their husbands. If the fellow was wise, he made sure she could continue living after he passed. This happened for the most part, with extended families observing their duty to the widows. Far too many fell through the cracks. And as time went on, the Judean court system and snarky lawyers found new ways to twist the Law of Moses in their favor, snatching widows’ property with impunity. Sounds familiar, eh? Anyway, by the time Jesus was born, the whole system was notorious for breeding greed, and “Pharisee” meant slimy, oppressive crook. Sort of like “Republican” today, with the other party at least as bad, but a different flavor, rather like “Democrat” today. And it all fell most heavily on orphans and widows, who were already in dire straights when Moses first began teaching God’s covenant.
Shortly after Jesus’ Ascension, things got really ugly for His followers. Once the Judean remnant of Israel had made their final official rejection of Jesus as Messiah, God allowed them to get even more stupid, to the point they provoked Roman repression, a century of wars, and finally kicked out of their Promised Land. Not totally, you understand, but it was symbolic in the first place: The Covenant of Moses was closed, packed away as a mere memory, and God no longer bound Himself to it. It was symbolic of a higher truth about the way God deals with fallen mankind.
The US is now at about the same place as those days after the Ascension. There is a tiny group of people actually following Jesus, but the mainstream of organized religious activity is hardly in His favor. The government is seriously compromised by accommodation of a much bigger imperial presence, allowing us a few scraps of our original heritage, but increasingly shaving off bits of it, until it’s all gone. Whether we will experience any revolts won’t make much difference, because the point is we are doomed. Any favor we as Americans ever had with God is now extinguished. We have to start over, and He’s forming a new nation from the remnant few who actually turn to His ways.
While Jesus truly inaugurated something utterly new, even He said it was just an extension of the ancient promises to all the world. So there is nothing really new in what God calls us to under Noah’s Covenant, but it seems new because we have drifted so very, very far from what He first commanded. And our time is up. Our sins are piled up higher than the sky, and God can no longer ignore us poking our fingers in His eye. Among the things we have brought upon ourselves is a deep, almost bottomless, economic depression. It will be bigger than anything seen before. It will bring crushing slavery upon us, grinding poverty and the attendant death. It will be worse than any war, because we will be attacked by our own in ways which have little to do with actual violence, and more at simply destroying everything which supports life.
The status of my Social Security “account” or my Veteran’s pension? Let’s not sweat the small stuff.
