Most Economic Growth Is Rooted in Sin

Think about it. What is it burns so brightly as to fire the economic engines of growth? You can give it a lot of different names, but it boils down to folks wanting stuff they don’t have.

Granted, wanting more than the berries, bugs, roots and animals you can catch or kill is not evil in itself. With rare exceptions, none of us have faced that. Oh, I suppose if you took some survival training you might have experienced moments of it, but I can’t imagine too many of my readers ever actually lived it. But improving your odds of survival against natural forces isn’t a bad thing in itself.

It’s not a bad thing to want covering for your tender hide against those natural forces, too. Indeed, let’s throw in shelter from the weather. None of it requires economic growth, as we know it, but simply requires cooperation with sufficient numbers of folks to exchange the products of their simple labors. Like a small tribe or extended household. If you can stand to be around your kin, you can probably get by and have time left over to notice.

Up to that point, God is smiling and His Laws have got you covered. You can do all that and be obedient to Him. But how about some of those modern conveniences? Okay, but how much convenience? At some point, you are wanting things you really don’t need. Yes, I use a nice computer. I’m blessed with the ability to share my thoughts with billions of humans, should they stumble across those words, displayed via the magic of computer technology. Yes, and Paul used the Roman roads and shipping traffic, but we know he most certainly did not approve of Roman government, which took his life unjustly. He simply took what was at hand and used it as a tool for obedience to His real King.

You can use any excuse to dodge the underlying question: Why? Why do you believe you need all that stuff? Is your life so empty you would not have a life if, say, a sudden EMP pulse from the Sun wiped out the entire electrical grid? It would be years coming back, and you still would need appliances that weren’t fried.

Meanwhile, all electronic communications would come to a halt. How else do we communicate? All of it depends on electricity. And food storage, and transportation, and climate controls, and — for those of you who still have one — your job. Aside from a relatively tiny stack of currency, almost all existing money is actually just numbers in a computer.

Okay, so maybe it won’t come to that. But that doesn’t matter, because the question remains: What do you really need? Because frankly, anything not covered in God’s Laws will tend to make Him pretty unhappy. Do you suppose this has nothing to do with the entire economic system of the West is coming apart? Just how much of the stuff we make, buy and sell is really consistent with His intentions for us? So maybe He’s cool with your laundry machines, but I have no trouble saying He’s not pleased with TV, movies, and most video games. Encouraging immorality is sin.

No, not liberal American morals, nor conservative, nor even libertarian and certainly not populist morals. God help us. If all you see in your world are neat political categories, you really do need to be shaken out of your artificial environment. All that stuff came up after folks rejected everything God said, except for a tiny slice of words which could be perverted to mean something else. No, this refers to morals rooted in the dawn of mankind. In case you are wondering, they still apply. God has not somehow grown up since then, and come up with a more sophisticated standard.

We are in sooooooo much trouble!