The Root of All Evil

One of the first serious acts I engage in every morning is to walk to the end of my driveway prior to my daily jog and read the headlines of the Wall Street Journal. Since mid-September the WSJ headlines have described the collapse of the financial markets and individual acts of corruption that are hard to imagine. Reading the usually restrained WSJ is almost torture as page after page is filled with stories describing faltering economies in virtually every country in the world and the efforts of desperate government officials to deal with the global meltdown. At the same time major corporations and industries are all feeling the pain and the word "bailout" has become the most used and hated term in recent weeks.

I strongly support the essentials of the capitalist system--free markets and free trade--But integrity is the coin of the realm of the free enterprise system and trust and transparency are necessary to sustain it. The current economic meltdown did not happen overnight, but it is the result of a steady decline in personal and corporate morality and affirms the admonition of two thousand years ago that "the love of money is the root of all evil." The fact that Bernard Madoff could fool some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful people for years and create a $50 billion Ponzi scheme reminds us that wealth and education have nothing to do with wisdom (the ability to determine right from wrong). We are also witnessing first hand the inability of the best and brightest to effectively deal with the crisis and in many ways their policies are making things worst.

It is not too extreme to say that the world is looking for a Messiah and much is being written about the hope that many have that the President-elect has some silver bullet to solve the current crisis. It is not going to happen. Scripture does tell us that someday The Messiah will reign and show us how government should function. It will all be accomplished without hedge funds, tax increases or acts of Congress. That day will come, but until then things will get worse before they get better.