Economics

All seats of authority are from God, but any government is of the people.

James 5:1-7

A her, “If you are nice to me, I will give to you what you want.”

A him, “Well, uh… That’s not very nice!”

    When we hold someone in derision because of an unpleasing attitude, we are doing the same as the rich man with Lazarus. Wondering why our own attitude with judging disconcerting behavior of another, especially one most beholding to us, is acceptable while we reject dealing with what seems to be an affront to our esteem or self-respect, puts us into why the rich man felt his judging of Lazarus was in his right of passage.

   As he thought of his blessings of riches being his reward for placing his trust of faith in God he assumed that Lazarus was being taught a lesson of suffering for being at odds with God’s merciful considerations. In the rich man’s pattern of playing ‘spin the bottle’ with other’s lives, he viewed the patient trust of Lazarus as an evil to be shunned. Many say, “Money talks…” but, money lies the lie of convenience in selfish delusion to the payee with cruelty done to the debtor.

   What is money for if not to reduce the miseries of our fellow human beings? We use money unwisely to divide the purposes of marriage and family, the integrity of a man with his wife to care for their children no matter race, creed, religion or social status, in efforts to minimize hardship by attempts to reduce populations. There can be no honest overseeing respect for “all created equal” when deciding which individuals and groups may flourish in living, and who may lose their lease on life “for the better good”.

   Gambling, or chance taking, the dishonorable exploitation of your faith is when your desires are because of people in the name of religion. Putting Christ first, and concerns for people because of Him, properly aligns your undertakings of risk in ways where your faithful desires no longer are counterproductive to living. Whatever you do, then, is not to achieve monetary results for the “service of God” but is in service to God whether or not monetary successes are the result. Consequently, care for those to whom you are accountable finds reality through your word of integrity rather than assuming your integrity rests in your bank account.

   God first, then people, then profits - not the other way round is the only way for everyone to thrive in the world of humanity.

   God, people, and profits, in that order, provides for a simultaneous achievement in unity of all three.

   Any other variation of order casts our intentions into sequential requirements where the unity of now is lost to yesterday and tomorrow because true class is not dependent on the materialistic security of money. Whatever it is in daily living, with respect to our positions in marriage, neglect means to choose resentful negativity against what (or who) God expects us to lift up into positive opportunity. Everything; including marriage, eternal salvation, shielding regard for the lives of unborn children, and respect for loyalty in passion becomes negotiable when money is considered the core of viability.

   Faith in God’s leading to apply our concerns in providing quality products and services respects His integrity in our integrity to appropriately care for our spouse, family, and fellow citizens – again, always in that order. Our endeavors to produce better sustenance, upkeep, securities, and satisfaction are not of money, but of devoted steadfast loyalty in our holding to who we are in our decisions with our loved ones. Calculated values look for excuses while true love needs no excuse. Money can be emotionally exciting because it answers a lot of questions.  However, it cannot tell right from wrong because it has no conscience.

   Whether we are paid well in what we do, or for some reason are not paid at all, our expressed love for God in expressing our love for what we do, to benefit those to whom we are committed is the faith-in-action God asks of us to give. This is why faith in God’s leading, sidetracked in priority to make money, stops short of God’s leading in living and diverts our natural faithing into the unnatural desires in the making of money for the sake of the love of money. 1st Timothy 6:10 says, For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

   So, if it is assumed that money is the expression of love, and 1st John 4:8 says, He that loves not knows not God; for God is love. then, it follows in perverted logic that God is money, or money is God. If that were the case, then stealing money, being rich, buying anyone we choose whatever they desire, and living the high life of opulence and wealth would be the full expression of God’s will in Christ’s salvation... “If you love me you will buy me things.” (though gifts for honest reasons are a proper use of money). Obviously, love from, of, and to God; and love from, of, and to people in His Name for His sake is a quite different way of consideration, without measure to quantify, that any amount of money can never approach.

"We reserve the rights to refuse sales and/or service to anyone for any reason," applies to privately held companies only. It is not applicable to investment backed corporations and public service agencies.

   Tight-fisted spendthrift misers keep restrictive controls over other’s expenditures, thinking or feigning a frugal righteousness of piety, descriptive ‘for godly instruction’ knowing full well their own pointed spending is directed to make others ‘make do…’. They can many times, but not always, be identified as ‘collectors’, ‘accumulators’, ‘ownership economists’, prudent,  sparing, careful and use their meager with-holding as a front.

   What belongs to anyone else is theirs to rate and judge, they believe, being blinded by their personal indignant plight… esteeming those who have the least as not viable against those who have the most whose successes merit a type of worship. What ‘they’ fail to acknowledge is they are not sent by God to be a god over others abilities, efforts, and wealth to flourish in Christ’s behalf for those with which they care.

   If when budgets are tightened we find it necessary to stop dining in restaurants (or even reduce our tipping), those who have jobs in food service have less with which to work. Expanding throughout the supply chain, more and more people have less to spend while prices are inflated in an attempt to make up for lost profits. A person who cannot now cook for a closed diner next to a closed motel cannot afford to spend at the clothier he used to patronize.

   Meanwhile the clothier is no longer in business because his main supplier’s factory is non-operational and the clothing store employees as well as the factory workers are either homeless or trying to fend off creditors. Add to that a governmental effort to further increase taxes to address increasingly dire social ills and disorder - public dole resource reliance including job cost expenses for a swelling need for social workers and other public service employees.

   Socialist pressures on individuals and businesses make for a caustic general unrest among the populous. Additionally, all crime channels expand to become crowded with hurting hopeless people who see no upturn in fortunes; not realizing or noticing that their very disgusted distress with the conflicting rough winds against established capitalistic structures further pulls down their own hard-fought-for, and won, economic arrangements.

   Lowering taxes and increasing positive commerce can be accomplished partly by not stealing from businesses (anyone, for that matter) whether a customer or an employee. Everyone who steals knows they are stealing. They will look to see if anyone is watching… For example, an item stolen off a shelf in a store increases the price of everything in the store, reduces wages for those who work there as well as those who manufacture and/or package what is for sale, and eliminates jobs that could otherwise solidify not only the store’s economic base but, also, the entire system of commerce. In short, it is not ‘them’ it is you.

   On another note, the only legitimate avenues an elected government has to reduce fuel prices is positive diplomacy with suppliers and to lower excise and other taxes.

Romans 8:11-14 says, “And, this besides, knowing the season, that it is an hour already for you out of sleep to be wakened; for, now, is our salvation nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent and the day has drawn near. Let us, then, cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light; as in daytime, becomingly let us walk. Not in revellings and in drunken bouts, not in chamberings and in wanton deeds, not in strife and envy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ; for the flesh, take not forethought to fulfill its covetings.

   While business is always, if conducted properly, a 50%/50% work-for-wage proposition between an employee and his or her employer; marriage, as well as attentive conversation, is a 100%/100% endeavor. Every situation is different, but "business is business" when it comes to basic realities that apply to everyone. In many group cultures it is assumed that individualistic and personal faith unto God through work efforts are a prerequisite for shared cohesive marriage partnership – that one or the other spouse, or both, are in denial of their faith in Christ if income difficulties arise.

   This conveys unfocused social pressures to “get right with God or separate from fellowship”. It bites to the core of healthy marriage union - the shared faith in God's provisional guidance. When the sequencing of togetherness in faith unto God according to His promises in Christ has its foundational strengths in order, a man and woman’s together trust supersedes financial concerns. They are then able to share encouragement based in honor with united dependence in their persistently expectant God supplied confidence.

   Making money is not the same as getting money. Just as feelings of the spirit person are not emotions of the flesh person, and the spirit of truth in reality is not the same as the spirit of the moment, choosing our thoughts in response to Christ with regard to those around us is not the same as following our thoughts about Him in how we interact with those same others. Commonly, we call ‘getting money’ ‘making money’ in that education, training, and experience prepare us to earn a better living if we have or find, and take advantage of, available opportunities. These are ways to ‘get money’ from those who ‘make money’. An employee helps his or her employer make a company’s money and therefore gets (hopefully) paid.

   Again, our professions in work, our employment in a career, are ways to get the money we need to pay our way through responsibilities and desires. As responsibilities and desires are not mutually exclusive concerns, we understand that tending to both is limited by our level of income. Endeavors to orient ourselves to how and where we may increase our income are plans, procedures, and cooperation with others to get the monies we need and want. Those who are in business to make money are also in business to get money, but the difference is in understanding that if one makes money, the possible opportunities of means to get money increases.

   Contrariwise, when one or another (or several to many) work to get money as a way to make money, it is very difficult to make money to get. ‘Making money,’ as opposed to ‘getting money’, is in integrating one’s creative production to the needs and wants of others. As an employee, that integration is in response to the wishes of owners, often through delegated supervisory authorities. Many private company’s best employees are the owners themselves because they understand their responsibilities to provide the work environment and social opportunities to help their employees make their money from which everyone may be paid.

   Because of profit motives in higher concern than the products and services a private or publicly held company holds dear, business supervisors transfer their wishes for increased sales into over-managing their employee’s decision making aptitudes. Therefore, as people forget why they work, governments’ treasuries print more backless money because more money is what people want. Those are those who want a paycheck while someone else does the hard work. Since money is created by labor through faith, doing a quality job is the only way that will back the exchange.

   We should beware of doom saying prognosticators who predict poor economic recovery. The atmosphere of fear vs. satisfaction based in negatives driving positives (or the reverse) is the philosophic fatalistic battleground investor hawks feed on to scrape off savings we put into corporate accounts in faith of the strengths of business encouragement. ‘Economic recovery’ means, to them, the volatile profiteering they assume is the monetary stability of trade and industry – but is in fact a siphoning-off leach that undermines resources companies have to improve their products and, thereby, the wage-paying base.

   God is a God of people helping people. (Colossians 1:10-24) “God helps those who help themselves,” is not Biblical, either Old or New Testament. It is a sublime sarcasm of faithless resentment in opposition to the Gospel as if the only power of protection against hunger and dereliction is a person’s social standing. We know there are thieves who misappropriate their faith quite well who leave their victims penniless and without. Consider Moses and the Exodus or Christ and His disciples. Also, there is not a general rule, except for putting marriage and immediate family first, and then neighbors as one can do with what he or she has in faith-action. When there are problems with supply fulfilling demand we think the government collective (taxes) has the funds to compromise.

   In that, it is assumed that big companies, and especially huge corporations, hold the keys to relieving poor people’s miseries through taxes to alleviate the imbalance between what is believed to be the successful and the unsuccessful.  That is devastatingly deceiving because larger businesses have the position to hopefully drive inflation to make up tax losses. The higher percentage taxes are, the more cuts in quality and workforce are made to keep the company afloat. Again, when we have difficulty buying what we are used to easily buy, it causes a general ‘tightening-the-belt’ atmosphere that cuts out higher employment numbers.

   The smaller the staff, the more workload each person has, the less there is to go around. The error is to assume that money is God’s willed answer of faith. Who needs faith in God when controlling one’s own monetary destiny is lost to those who make larger barns to guard against those who would break in to take what they are lacking? However, it is Christ Who responds to those who tend to faithfully upholding their household(s).  In Scripture, God reveals to us He does not know everything before it happens because He gives us the choice to respond to His call of salvation. He gives us the preference to choose what we will say and what we will do.

   Since the eternal value of our souls are infinitely more important than our financial well being, and He knows of our tendencies to greed in the face of wealth, we might find ourselves poorly struggling and at the same time among people of poverty who need a witness of faith and endurance. God is our immediate supply for His purposes in the moments of daily life. He meets us where we are – not yesterday or tomorrow. The three tiered purposes of any business are providing goods and services, and the jobs necessary for workers to produce those goods and services, for the sake of God’s benevolent gift of living. Profits are a natural consequence and not the goal.

   For example: Governmental and business provided health insurance/care programs reduce employee wages, increase the costs of goods and services, swell taxation overload, undermine pick-and-choose expressions of conscience, and drive economic optimism into despair. Men and their wives, as well as our nation, more appropriately would be better off to buy private health insurance coverage while keeping their faith reliance in God through healthy living. It is commonly believed that the core of a man's provisions of support for his wife and children is money. But, God's promise to the faithfully involved is He knows and understands our most cared about needs and will provide.

   The wisdom of mankind is based in physically observable results of compensation for labor of the flesh, while the wisdom of God is based in the spiritual unseen results manifested in mortal life through prayer, faith, and the same labor for a different reason.  Consequently, a man's provisions for his wife and children are his invitations and opportunities for togetherness and unity of pledge based heartfelt purpose. As we trust in His leading by upholding our own word in His Word to those we are committed, through faith action in respecting whom we are to our loved ones; we will find there is no lack in His fulfilling our proper expectations.

   Creation of the universe is unfolding even as you are reading this. God chose, for our sake, to become vulnerable to trust because of His promise of the Authority inherent in free will to everyone. Honor has in His design the primary elements of respect and courtesy. He knows the results of decisions and choices people may make and can and does intervene when it does not violate His Word. God knows the intent of the heart and wishes a person’s attention to be converted from misunderstanding to understanding.

   If a person’s intent in their desire is to establish a relation with the world through the knowledge of good and evil, he or she has the right to do so. It does not mean it is right or healthy for them and others, but it does affect the entirety of creation. So, God does not know specifically what we will do tomorrow, or in the next moment, because we have the call to accept His will, or not. Just as we do not know the choices our children are making as a day transpires, God does not know what choices we will make. He sent His Son to provide an avenue for our restoration to Him and the life He created for us to have. We have the choice to accept His offer of salvation.

   The means God used to do this is to separate His Omnipotence from the temporal world by granting His authority to the people through their prophesied position of fulfillment. In other words, by grace through faith, the creation of the finishing of the souls is in the Authority of the people. If a person uses his or her authority (bought through Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection) to have faith in secular existence, the moments of life become part of the eroding of Creation itself. God wishes all to be saved. Not everyone wishes to be saved. Therefore, in His ever-loving kindness, God blesses a person with the joy, or suffering, of his or her own life, or demise, respectively.

   A rich man may have the secular reward he wishes. There is much poverty and suffering, denial of opportunity, and most importantly lost souls, at the hands of selfish and ambitious people. There are many genuine God loving faithful Christians who die of starvation at the hands of self-righteous, prideful, and indignant people. Time, and time again, many have said, "It's never too late." More importantly, it's never too early. Because the Work of Christ encompasses all things, including time itself, there is no such thing as fate. Fate is a myth that denies personal responsibility. Each person was brought into this world with an intended general purpose.

   The idea, or belief, that every thought, feeling, act, and event was planned to happen is not true. Most people, due to distraction and influence by Satan and his demons, other people, and by their own choosing, never find their purpose. There is no luck. There is no coincidence. Everything and everyone is being influenced in one way or another. This world, as we know it, is a battlefield. Even though the war has been won, the working out of the battles of process is not finished. As long as anyone believes they must earn God’s attentions, He views them as immature and under the dictates of the Law.

   When anyone accepts His grace and mercy of Life through faith in Christ, He views them as mature and under the freedoms of the Grace of obedience to promise that dismantles the restrictions of the law by obedience through works. Everyone is a part of Christ whether in His death or His resurrection. Life is a matter of accepting to be lifted up into the Resurrection of Christ’s mercy, out from our death in His of condemnation by Crucifixion. Devotion, when founded in valuing people based in their monetary prowess, will wax and wane with the intensities of life and death. False faith drawn from emotional attachments to financial seed planting leads to shallow allegiances.

   Fanaticism, through materialistic defensive ideas and exercises, places other’s faithful expectations into subservient faithless obligated fantasies and serves to bring reproach upon the causes of truth. The adversary works to deceive people by driving them into extremes, and when their habits are extreme the Gospel message is mentally screened in ways that simple faithful trust loses its understanding. Satan’s demonic entities incessantly are ready to seize our concerns to exploit every error, every failure, and every unbecoming act and hold it up among the people in its most exaggerated light - to render loathsome perceptions about our faithful living people.

   The prince of evil contests every inch of ground over which God’s people may advance in their Christ victory by blinding people to the reasons they work and what may be done with their income(s). Thus, the greater the numbers of God = Money believers he can crowd into making false professions of faith in money, as if it is the power of God, the more distant people become from each other. While his power of suggestion controls their hearts, the greater advantage he thinks to gain is by calling attention to destruction of the witness marriages and families exist to give as the Church Body of Gospel believers.

"The envious feel misunderstood in their hunger."

Lamentations chapter 3

"Times change, but right and wrong always stays the same."  ~ Gene Autry

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... He has the whole world in His hands