The US Financial Crisis in numbers one can understand: Imagine a family that makes 47,620 dollars per year. They spend $71,040, therefore putting 23,420 on a credit card. Theres already $281,560 that they already owe on credit cards, and every day $82.79 dollars is added to the credit card in interest. We talk about this in the "Trillions" and most tune out. Break it down to a point where everyone can relate.

I copied and pasted this blurb from a FB friend today. Now, I haven't troubled myself to verify the accuracy of the numbers, and honestly, it is not necessary.

We can circumvent the accuracy argument by breaking it down even further:

Our government has a certain 'income' based on tax revenue

Every year, our government spends more that it brings in in taxes.

This is possible by 'borrowing money'. They do that by selling bonds and notes; mostly to foreign governments. They could also 'just print' money, but doing so lessens the value of the total amount of money (called inflation). This has happened to a certain extent, but the bulk of our 'budget deficit' comes from borrowing.

We have hit our credit limit. Now, if you are at your kitchen table discussing your financial problems with your spouse; the conversation invariably goes to stop spending more than you make, or borrow more (open a new credit card, or otherwise increase your credit limit). Could you imagine making the decision to borrow more and go further into debt because you 'have' to maintain your standard of living? That is exactly what our congress critters are debating... raising our credit limit so that we can borrow more to maintain an untenable life style.

Yep, that'll work.

Either no one in Australia was 'worthy' and got left behind, or the nut jobs can crawl back in their cave....either way, we return you to your life, already in progress.

We have all had a lot of fun at this guy's expense. I saw his name, but failed to commit it to memory...some preacher based in California? Well, that explains a lot!

But seriously, what is the motivation at work here? Most Christians believe the Bible to be the 100%, infallible, perfect, word of God. I am Christian, but I do not believe that myself. I DO believe that even though the Bible is imperfect (being written by the hands of man, and all), there is a GREAT deal to be learned there. I am particularly intrigued by the parable of the prodigal son. That will be a blog for another day.

So, where is this guy coming from?

If he is Christian, and a pastor, no less; surely he has at least heard about the verse where Jesus tells us that no man shall know the day or hour of his return. Surely he knows that the day can not be calculated, as he has claimed to have done, no more than God's existence can be 'proven' through man's limited scope of logic and fact.

So, what does that leave us to draw about him?

1) He has no touch with reality, and is completely delusional.

2) He is quite rational, but has a motive that we have not yet explored.

Of the two, I believe #1 to be the case, but let us examine #2 a bit as an intellectual exercise. Perhaps we can learn something about ourselves and the modern church by doing so.

If he is rational, yet makes his doomsday predictions, in spite of the Biblical evidence, he does so for a reason. Why?

• He is not a Christian, and seeks to discredit Christianity by claiming to be one and making an absolute mockery of the faith. - Is this plausible? I have not wasted much time to look very deeply into this guys past, but the published claim is that he was a pastor of a church in California. For now, we will accept that as fact, although for any serious discussion to take place here, we should trouble ourselves to confirm it. It would also appear to be fact that he has spent a great deal of personal wealth on 'getting the word out'. In order to spend the time he did as a Christian leader, and go through the expense he has, if this is a discrediting campaign, it would come as the result of a severe disappointment,or anger with his former faith. I believe if this were the root, he would be pointing to the event that shook his world and screaming, "see, what GOD would allow this to happen?" We see this frequently with the death of loved ones, especially sudden deaths, or young ones where the survivors are ill prepared to handle the trauma. My vote is - Not plausible.
• He is Christian, and sees this as a tool to 'save the masses'. Drive them into a fear of eternal damnation on a definite time line, and watch them pour into the church for their helping of salvation. That is pretty crappy, right? I mean, let's not show people what God says about this, then we can use their own fear of the unknown to drive them into our waiting and loving arms, then we get credit for being the one who led them to Christ. Pretty crappy, right? Wait a minute....does the modern church not do this anyway? He has carried the tactic to the pinnacle, but this pastor has done nothing more than expand an already existent page in the Christian playbook. God tells us that Jesus died for our salvation......PERIOD! His love is unconditional....PERIOD! He requires nothing from us for that salvation. It has already been given. Do we hear that in our churches? What we hear in the church is a punch list of things we have to do in order to receive salvation. The punch list varies from denomination to denomination, and some denominational lists are shorter than others, but the fact of the matter remains, the list is there; and the modern church holds up the list and uses fear of consequences to herd people into checking off the items on the denominationally approved list. Let's take a trip back to the Bible for a moment, and see if we can find anyone else in Biblical history who did the same thing......ah, here we go. How about the Pharisees? This, more than the antics of our clown that brought this discussion into being, is more telling of the end of times than anything. The Pharisees claimed to represent God to the masses. They used their monopoly on theology to hold the masses in spiritual bondage. Jesus came to end that bondage and set us all free throughout the breadth of time. Now we have a modern church, who like the Pharisees, claims to represent God, I mean, after all...they are the hands and feet of Jesus, right? If you don't believe the same way they do, you, of course are condemned to hell, but they will keep praying for you until you believe the way they do.. The modern church doesn't hold a spiritual monopoly, but pretty darn close. When Jesus does come back, I believe it will be to release us from spiritual bondage again, only this time, the modern church will have taken the place of the Pharisees in the story.

Now, I still think this guy is a crack pot, but I think God has used him to show us something of His character in the process.

....my 2 cents worth, adjusted for inflation.

OK, I'll admit to the n'th degree of lameness on blogging. I could make hundreds of excuses; but the truth of the matter is, that I have not found great value for my time in blogging. I believe that is changing. I have found that documenting life, even one as mundane as mine, may actually have value.....stay tuned.