Friday 26 December 2008

Hitting the Shops for the Boxing Day Sales--Again

The Idolatry of Debt

We posted recently on the rapidly increasing levels of national debt we are facing in New Zealand. The current account has been in deficit every quarter for over fifteen years; not only has the deficit been getting larger overall, but the rate at which we are getting into debt is rising. The question is begged as to why this should be so. What is it about Athens that makes modern society addicted to debt fueled consumption?

Not all Athenian societies are thus afflicted. Take Japan as an example. Japan is implacably non-Christian, yet it has a high savings rate. One reason is that the Japanese have no choice but to save. Given the Confucian ethic of filial piety that pervades the eastern world, most Japanese believe they have a duty to take care of their aging parents, as well as their children. There is no statist welfare system. So Japanese society feels compelled to forgo present consumption and gratification for the sake of providing for the extended family in the future. Filial bonds and family love is a powerful motivator to save.

Moreover, the knowledge that you face the vagaries of life without the “safety net” of statist welfare brings a certain sobriety into one's spending habits. Fear is also a powerful economic motivator to save.

Thus, Japanese society maintains a high savings rate. But in the post-Christian western world, Athens is characterised by rising indebtedness, low savings, and spectacular addiction to consumption lifestyles. And this is pretty much universal in the west. Why?

The reasons are spiritual—that is, to do with the prevailing and predominant religion of the day. The West has, in its post-Christian garb, become a culture of entitlement. Beliefs in universal human rights have transmogrified into a world where people believe they are entitled to just about everything. I have a right not to starve—regardless of whether I choose to work or not. I have a right to a certain standard of living—and others (the state) has a duty to ensure that I get it. I have a right to a certain minimum wage, regardless of what value my work might create. I have a right to a certain standard of living regardless of my enterprise, thrift, work, or lack thereof.

Freedom to pursue has become a right to expect and demand from others. Wherever state welfare has been adopted in Athenian societies, savings rates are low, debt is high, and consumption is relentless. The deeply held belief that society will provide for my future, encourages reckless consumption in the present. Consumption can quickly become addictive: the discipline to deny oneself in the present for the sake of future advantage disappears, being replaced by a culture of gratification in the present.

How many people seek to deal with depression by gorging on food, or by buying goods? When times become harder, debt levels rise, rather than consumption reducing. Gratification in the present easily justifies increased debt in order to maintain consumption. The rights-based culture of entitlement readily sanctions such behaviour.

What this has produced in modern western Athenian societies is a rapidly widening ghetto culture. Sociologist Edward Banfield characterises the attitudes of people captive in metropolitan ghettos, who cannot get out of them. Read carefully the following description of the ghetto mindset:
At the present-orientated end of the scale, the lower-class individual lives from moment to moment. If he has any awareness of a future it is of something fixed, fated, beyond his control: things happen to him, he does not make them happen. Impulse governs his behaviour, either because he cannot discipline himself to sacrifice a present for future satisfaction or because he has no sense of the future. He is therefore radically improvident: whatever he cannot use immediately he considers valueless. . . .

Although his income is usually much lower than that of the working-class individual, the market value of his car, his television, and household appliances and playthings is likely to be considerably more. He is careless with his things, howver, and even when nearly new, they are likely to be permanently out of order for lack of minor repairs. His body, too, is a thing “to be worked out but not repaired”; he seeks medical treatment only when practically forced to do so: “symptoms that do not incapacitate are often ignored.” . . . .

The lower class household is usually female based. The woman who heads it is likely to have a succession of mates who contribute intermittently to its support but take little or no part in rearing the children. In managing the children the mother (or aunt, or grandmother) is characteristically impulsive: once children have passed babyhood they are likely to be neglected or abused, and at best they never know what to expect next.

The Unheavenly City, p. 61,62

The thing here is that this lower-class world view is increasingly becoming the world view of the working class and the middle class and the upper class. The ghetto mentality and attendant world-view is spreading rapidly—as lifestyles of the “not so rich and not so famous” are being fueled by instant gratification with material possessions, funded by debt.

We cannot see how Athens will get out of this vice—short of some great shock or desperate exigency, such as a world-war. The problem lies at the heart of Athenian religion.

The Christian, however, has been turned away from the idolatry of Unbelief. His heart has been changed by the Spirit of Christ. The idols of entitlement have been broken. The Christian sees himself as a steward under God—responsible to the King to administer all income and capital in His Name, and as He commands.

The Scriptures declare that debt is a form of slavery. The borrower is slave to the lender. (Proverbs 22:7) Debt restricts our ability to be free to serve God. Therefore the Christian is very cautious about debt, deeply reluctant to enter into debt contracts, and seeks to pay it down as soon as possible.

Secondly, the Christian knows that he has a duty to prepare for the future. He must lay up an inheritance for his grandchildren. (Proverbs 13:22) Therefore his work, thinking, planning must encompass at least four generations: he must take care of his own aging parents; he must provide for his own wife and children; he must prepare, plan, and work for the benefit of his adult children and their future; he must also extend his thinking out to how he is going to contribute to the lives of his children's children. This is what it means to be a Christian man or woman: it is a duty and calling that is all consuming and completely demanding. But it is the Lord's way.

Therefore, thrift and disciplines of long term saving characterise the Christian lifestyle and world-view. Because the Christian has a future and a hope, and he knows that the future is more important than the present, he is willing to sacrifice enormously in the present for the sake of the future.

Athenians have no future and therefore no hope. They have only the present. The idol of entitlement requires constant obeisance and worship: "I will have it; I will have it now; and you will see that I get it". In the end, Athenian society will crumble into grinding, degraded impoverishment. Only the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ can prevent the inevitable outcome.

1 comment:

Ron McK said...

Excellent post.

The reasons that Inflation is such popular policy is that inflation rewards those that are in debt.