Ben Stein's money

I never knew Ben Stein was an economist, but this article credits him as being so, and I suppose I have to believe them. I thought he was just Ferris Bueller's teacher. Whatever he is, he also must be stinkin rich, since he had a game show in which he allegedly gave away his own money as prizes, and he is also said (by aforementioned article) to live in Beverly Hills AND Malibu, which last time I checked do not border each other, so you can rule out any possible explanation of a single residence.

Anyway, he is also (and I think I was vaguely aware of this) socially-politically-economically conscious, active, what, and occasionally writes about it as he did for The American Spectator. As far as I can tell this is a conservative-leaning publication, but this particular article wasn't really partisan. In fact, it blamed no one and took blame for nothing. It simply stated the facts. And, in an understated but clear way, it said that the facts are Not Good.

Unlike this article, I hope Christians not only know and state and condemn the way things are, but seek biblical solutions. I hope Christians don't exclaim "Americans sure spend a lot of money on nonsense!" and then (gleefully or guiltily) go spend more money on nonsense. I hope we don't think that the solution to poverty is to make all the rich people poorer, or to tell the poor to go home and stop complaining. I hope none of us read that middle-class Americans go into tons of debt because they can't keep up their standard of living otherwise, and come away with the lesson that the government should raise minimum wage and lower prices of iPods. Maybe it isn't the wages but our self-invented standard of "good living" that is impossible to work with. And maybe that means we can change something out how we live, and set a good example, and teach other what it means to please God with our lives and resources. Just a thought.

But you can read the article anyway. It's a simple summary on the state of affairs in America for those who haven't thus far been keeping score.

Your Father sees in secret

"Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
"Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
_Matthew 6.1-4

Hypocrisy and help.

“Until the United States changes its own policies of holding detainees indefinitely, in secret prisons and without basic rights, it cannot credibly be viewed as a world human rights leader." _Spokesman for Amnesty International

The U.S. released its annual human rights report today. This is our government's state-of-global-humanity address, as well as a sort of worst-of list. The worst of 2006 was declared to be the Darfur genocide.

I wonder how true this spokesman's reaction is. I know it's true that the U.S. has come under fire for some of its practices with prisoners. Just yesterday I read a New York Times article written by a man who had been mistakenly detained by the CIA for months and months in terrible conditions, only to be dumped somewhere sans supplies or apology when they figured out the mistake. There are other, more common, less dramatic cases documented, even admitted by the President.

Still, the U.S. hasn't conducted any genocides lately, or ever. The government is not guilty of "widespread killing of civilians, rape as a tool of war, systematic torture, robbery and recruitment of child soldiers." But does the fact that we're "not as bad" mean we can act self-righteous toward "really bad" governments, like Sudan, while ignoring our own faults? No. Do we have a responsibility to speak out against Darfur genocide? Yes. Should we have pure motives while doing so? Yes. Do the children who are suffering in the meantime care more about our motives than about stopping the genocide? No.

Complicated issues that I don't have answers for.

"Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you: break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity." _Daniel, to Nebuchadnezzar

How does the gospel, with its message of repentance, of healing and cleansing, of a new kind of kingdom - all on a spiritual level, but certainly with future implications for the physical dimension as well - have any bearing on government integrity and Darfur? Well, all I can say is that like all good Christian civic leaders (and there have been quite a few, though not as many as we might wish), we must strive to make the gospel permeate our society. Not on a superficial moralistic level; not simply through public policy. Minds are change when hearts are changed when God's people ask God to change them.

Feeling rich?

Making rich people feel guilty for being rich annoys me. And Americans' addiction to feeling guilty for being rich annoys me even more. Know why? It assigns blame where there isn't necessarily blame and avoids assigning responsibility where responsibility should be stressed.

The thing about awareness is that in the "Information Age" you have to be of sub-average intelligence NOT to be aware that Americans are rich compared to the rest of the world (or that AIDS is a global problem, or that poverty has not been eradicated, etc.). If you know how to use the internet and watch TV and aren't completely self-absorbed, you have to work pretty hard not to know these things.

And from what I've seen in my generation there is this obsession with KNOWING, and, as I mentioned, an addiction to feeling guilty. We see a tiny bit of what the rest of the world is like and we feel guilty for being Westerners. So we have to do penance. We need to know and repeat the statistic that Americans spend more annually on ice cream than some countries' GDP, so that we can feel fat and ridiculously extravagant. But we either stop buying ice cream, which doesn't do anybody much good, or we keep buying ice cream anyway, which doesn't do anybody much good and makes us even fatter.

Enter Global Rich List, here to help subsidize our addiction. Enter your yearly salary in the currency of choice and find that if you make an average college student income (about $5000) you're in the top 14% of the world; if you make the average American income, you're in the top 3%. Come one, come all.

Wouldn't it be nice if instead of gathering round the computer screen to feel rich - to feel simultaneously blessed and guilty - we took our oodles of wealth and started to bless others? I think the real reason we feel guilty about being rich is that we weren't meant to be comfortable with sitting on our blessings. If we are called God's people, his blessings to us should quiver in our hands and tremble in our pockets with anticipation. We should be unable to wait to start blessings others with it.

Nobody asked us if we wanted to be rich Americans. And nobody asked us if we wanted the responsibility to bless others. And we certainly didn't ask for those things ourselves. But those are precisely the privileges that God has given us.