Christians believe in the ubiquity of ethics. Everything is ethically shaped, conditioned, prescribed and proscribed. Right and wrong are pervasive. There is no such thing as a non-ethical, value free zone--not anywhere, not anytime. We believe this as a necessary concomitant of acknowledging the Living God, Who has created and sustains all things out of nothing. Every atom, every force, every wave and particle, every conscious and unconscious being belongs completely to Him. God is not neutral or disinterested with respect to anything in the creation. God is a jealous God. He is aligned to Himself: He will not share His glory with another. The three Persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son and the Spirit are infinitely and exhaustively loyal to One Another.
In the world of modern Unbelief the highest locus of power is purported to be the state. This is perversely illustrated by secular Libertarian movements which irrationally assert the sovereignty of the individual soul over the state but cannot buttress the assertion with any manifest power or force. Libertarians can be taxed, thrown into prison and executed, just like anyone else. There is no "higher Power" to which they believe they can appeal.
Christians reject the nostrum that the highest power belongs to the state. The modern state is as soft butter in the hands of the Living God. When a government does evil, the Christian always appeals to Heaven, appearing before the Throne of the Son of Man. Their prayers are heard. Either the state will humble itself and be willingly conformed to His ubiquitous divine ethic or it will be racked until it does. We do not have in mind the Lord's employment of natural disasters so much (though our Lord has made it plain that the ethical object of all natural disasters is to teach us to fear God and repent, Luke 13:1-9). Rather, we have in mind the racking that occurs when societies built their grand edifices upon sinking unethical sands, only to have them collapse in upon themselves--and great is the ruin thereof.
To underscore the point, consider the present plight of Europe. For three or four generations now, Europe has sought to build a model enlightened secular state, with a fervent commitment to state expropriation, theft, bribery, and largesse to build the model new society. Europe has endeavoured to build its edifice on foundations of official amorality and agnosticism, if not atheism. Christianity has been tolerable, so long as it acknowledged the overlordship of government in anything and everything the state placed its thick finger upon. "Thou shalt not steal" and "thou shalt not covet" as being legitimately applicable to the state went the way of the dodo, long time passin'.
The pursuit of prosperity and wealth, to be achieved and engineered by subjugating national states to an uber-Euro state, has led the governing elites in Europe in an orgy of avarice. Avarice for the property of its subjects to build Europe into a first world power block, finally shuffling off its notorious past of Fascism and crypto-Communism. But greed and avarice are insatiable: in the end, they need to be financed by borrowing--mortgaging the future to the grand edifices of the present.
Borrowing is a subtle thing. To work, it too must be ethically grounded. It only works if the lender believes the borrower is not going to bear false witness (another Commandment) and that the obligation to repay will be met. When governments begin to borrow, things work well in the early days: governments are said to be "risk-free" borrowers--that is, there is no room for any possible doubt that a government will repay its borrowings. Why, it is inconceivable that a government could default. (Clearly, those who hold to such verities long are ignorant of history, and so, as Santayana observed, are condemned to repeat it.)
In the end, the honesty and integrity of government turns upon the integrity of the governors (the politicians, the lawmakers, the judges, the commissioners, the governing elites). If they are not committed to the Ninth Commandment personally, it is highly likely they will readily dismiss it when it comes to the nation's debt. The call of the grand edifice is too powerful; the dreams of avarice too compelling. The "national interest" and all that. Before long there never is any intention to repay national debt--only to roll it over to repeat or new lenders on the "bigger fool theory" which posits there is always a bigger fool out there somewhere who will be prepared to lend more.
Until it suddenly dawns on lenders that maybe, just maybe the government will not be able to pay its debts. Once willing lenders implicitly believed that governments would swear to their own hurt, and not change. Lending to governments was risk free. Governments are the most powerful force in the universe. But as soon as doubts begin to bubble to the surface, cracks in the edifice not only appear, but widen more alarmingly than in a Christchurch earthquake. The pundits call it a "crisis of confidence". Policy makers rush around trying to "restore confidence". What they really mean is frantic attempts to assure people that governments will act ethically--that is, they will meet their obligations and repay their debts. But the attempt to reassure paradoxically becomes an evidence to the contrary. Attempts to "restore confidence" is testimony to the graveness of the doubt in the first place.
Lenders become unwilling to lend on the premise that one should not throw good money after bad; national debt cannot be rolled over; national bankruptcy results. Are we at that point? According to Satyajit Das, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, it would seem so. And if not this year, it is only a matter of time.
These European countries do have a few things in common. Among them are very high and potentially unsustainable debt levels and a reliance on foreign investors to purchase their debt.
The rising cost of borrowing makes high levels of debt unsustainable because of the cost of interest payments. Eventually, countries lose access to commercial funding, which is what happened to Greece and Ireland. . . .
Stronger countries that move to support weaker countries by financing bailouts do so at the risk of damaging their own credit quality and ability to raise funds. As concerns about the peripheral countries have risen, interest rates for Germany and France, which would have to bear the burden of supporting others, have risen.
Europe increasingly resembles a group of mountaineers roped together. As the members fall one by one, the survival of the stronger ones is increasingly threatened.
And now, here is the money quotation, which underscores just how unethical and immoral Europe's leaders have become:
European leaders see markets as the cause of the problems. But unsustainable levels of debt remain the heart of the problem.
You who have sought to make a name for yourselves--who have been possessed with dreams of grandeur and gripped with avarice; you, who have made a faustian pact with voters to make them wealthy on the back other people's expropriated property; you, who have promised heaven in your vaunting pride to build a secular paradise on earth; to you, your house will be left desolate.
This is God's world. His word is law, everywhere. There are no exceptions, no bolt holes. If you do not listen, you will be made to hear--the hard way.
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