Hard Times, Hard Truths & the Economics of the Christian Family

Russell Moore:

Perhaps the economic crisis is momentary. Perhaps jobs will return more quickly than we assume, foreclosures will stall, investment portfolios will bounce back. We hope so. A time of economic shaking, however, offers the Church the opportunity to call us away from captivity to the appetites, to reconsider some of our hidden assumptions.

Maybe it will teach us to teach our people to live within their means, to stand by their words, to love their families, and to be content with lives of godliness and dignity. As extended families come together, as churches band together to care for those “reduced in force” from their jobs, perhaps we’ll be forced to abandon the illusions of ourselves as self-contained units of production and consumption.

Perhaps we’ll see that life is about more than acquisition—acquisition of possessions or orgasms or acclaim. Perhaps these times will cause us, like our Lord Jesus in his wilderness temptations, to turn away from momentary satisfaction—whether of our consumer or sexual “needs”—and toward the more permanent things.

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