Trading Wealth for Trusting God

Every single piece of American currency I handle has the following four words on it: In God We Trust. I’m sure I’ve been through this mental exercise before, but the more I think about it, the clearer it becomes. So, let me start from the beginning and see if I can unclutter the thinking around economics.

I’m not an economist, but what I’ve been able to learn from studying economic theories is that they are built on principles that are not fully understood by economists. It’s like a physicist trying to figure out why Newtonian physics don’t apply to quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics determine macroscopic physical behavior, but our trust in the physical world is all in the macroscopic. But physical properties in the quantum world are rather bizarre to macroscopic creatures.

Likewise, people use their money based on observed economic rewards and macroscopic speculations rather than quantum economic principles that are rarely, if ever, discussed in the economic quarter.

So lets think through this…

If I want to eat, I need food. So, I hunt or plant a garden or raise livestock. After the plants are grown and the animals are killed, I need to prepare the food for storage. Growing season only happens seasonally and whole animals are usually too large for me to eat in one sitting. They need to be prepared for storage. This ensures that my livestock and I can eat when the garden lays fallow. Then, the food needs to be processed and prepared for eating when mealtime comes around. At every step of the way, I require tools and I have to spend some time making and maintaining my tools.

All of this takes a lot of work and I would spend my whole life focused on food. But if I have some new and improved tools then can do more work with less effort. I can even have an abundance of food with some time left over for other activities like building a house to live in or making clothes to wear. Those things take tool and better tools could leave me with the capacity to make houses or clothing for others as well as share my food with them and still have some time left over for some leisure.

My grandfather was a farmer in the Midwest. He organized one of the first farming co-ops in the area where farmers pooled their resources together, purchased equipment that none of them could afford on their own and helped each other out for significant gains on their productivity.

My grandfather didn’t have to concern himself with preparing daily meals or making clothing. My grandmother did that. She didn’t have to concern herself with working in the fields. My grandfather did that. Together, they were able to trade what each did for the services of the other. Grandpa brought the food and an grandma prepared it. Grandpa made sure they had a house to live in with furnishings and grandma adorned it and them with available materials.

But they required materials that they didn’t produce on the farm. Grandpa produced much more food than he needed. He sold the abundance for money and used the money to purchase those things they didn’t produce on the farm. Essentially, he traded his abundance for what he needed. Someone else out there was producing what he needed without producing food.

So, work produces things we need or want. We’ll define this as wealth. The creation of wealth happens when people produce something that can be used, exchanged or traded for something else.

There are some things that we don’t produce that we need. Land is an example. The value of land is increased by doing work to it to the ends of being able to make it more productive or by building things on it that people need, like houses or places of business.

There are other things that we don’t produce that we don’t need that we otherwise attach arbitrary value to. These are things like gold. Sure, work goes into the mining and refining of it, but gold itself is worthless as something that can be used to sustain life.

As tools are developed and employed to help us produce things we need, this frees up people to produce things we don’t need. As such, we create various types of art and other diversions for the time we have freed up for ourselves.

Here’s a simple graph:



There are other factors such as changes in value over time that would turn this into a multi-dimensional graph.

The reason I investigate this is so that we can begin to see the relationship between the creation of wealth and trade.

The problem with hyper-macroscopic theories of economy is that they focus only on trade patterns as indicators and fail to distinguish between needs and wants in the creation of wealth.

So, what is the stock market all about? Unless you are carrying money around in your pocket or it’s in the safes and cash drawers at various places of business, all money is placed in accounts that are used to pay various operating expenses of corporations. The people whose money is paying these expenses are the owners of these corporations. Their level of ownership is determined by how much of their money is in each corporation. The method of accounting for this is called stock.

So, where basic trade is simply trading one needed thing for another and currency allows a certain flexibility in doing this, the stock market takes trade to a new level. Now, inasmuch as corporations can rise or fall in value, the ownership of these corporations can be traded for profit. But where does the profit really come from? If the corporation makes its money on manufacturing where real wealth is being created, then the value of the corporation comes from the marketability of the corporation’s product. If the corporation is making things that cannot be sold for whatever reason, then the value of the corporation is reduced to the property of the corporation: the tangible assets. If the corporation is able to sell what they make at a profit and their value doesn’t change, then at least the profit increases the wealth of the stockholders. If the company is able to increase profits over a period of time, then stock can easily be bought and resold at a profit.

But one other factor is almost ridiculous. That is the fact that if stock can be sold for more than it’s really worth, then stockholders can make a profit off the stock aside from how well the corporation actually performs. This is called a bubble. The true value of stock appears to be what the stock is sold for when the true value of stock is actually how well the corporation performs. If the true value is revealed, then the bubble bursts and stockholders lose money. The money went to the former owners who sold the stock for more than it was worth.

Confused yet? It gets worse. Suppose that a corporation doesn’t create wealth, but rather makes profits by trading. This would be something like an insurance company. Some of their profits come from their clients who pay premiums for insurance coverage. On the whole, a client base may pay more than they receive, but the company takes the money and invests it in such things as the stock market.

Other things that get traded are things like gold. The only thing that gives gold its lasting value is what other people are willing to pay for it. It’s like a perpetual bubble. The thing is, it’s been traded for so long it’s a relatively stable bubble. That doesn’t mean it can’t bust, however. If people get to the point where they won’t buy gold for what they once bought it, then gold will decrease in value.

But what are most important are two relationships I don’t see discussed much. First is the ratio between the rate of production and the rate of trade. Second is the percent of production co-opted by extraneous traders. And these two relationships are related.

Lets get back to the farm. Farmer Ralph is working his combine off and bringing in the grain fast enough to feed everyone in the town for the whole year. So, no one else in town needs to grow grain because Farmer Ralph has enough for everyone. Farmer Ralph needs electricity so he exchanges some grain on a regular basis for it thereby feeding the people at the electrical plant and gaining grain for himself. However, one year a drought plagues the farm and for that year, he doesn’t have enough grain to pay for the electricity. Ideally, the value of the grain he was able to harvest went up because he had les of it and there has to be a way to spread around the grain evenly throughout all the people in the town. However, no one is keeping track well enough and now the people who make electricity don’t have anything to eat. They have to stop making electricity so they can go out and find a way to bring in food. The rate of production and the rate of trade have both decreased.

Money is worthless if it’s not being spent. If it’s spent too slowly things like Farmer Ralph’s grain goes to waste and production is made worthless. If it’s spent too quickly, Farmer Ralph either runs out of grain and doesn’t have enough left to trade for the things he needs or the value of his grain goes up and he’s not motivated to make as much grain as he must in order for everyone in the whole town to eat.

You see, the value of such things as land, gold or art is worthless without the creation of new wealth. The creation of new wealth is worthless if it’s not used. And because of specialization and the division of labor, in order for it to be used, it has to be traded.

So, a healthy economy requires a healthy rate of the creation of wealth with a healthy rate of trade.

If healthy trade is compromised by too many or too large bubbles, then when the bubbles start to burst, the rate of trade is significantly diminished and subsequently diminishes the means for maintaining the rate of the creation of wealth.

To put it simply: If no one works, no one gets paid. If no one gets paid, no one works.

It’s not my intent to go into the reason why the big bubbles happened. Suffice it to say that there became more leaches on the trade side than workers on the creation side. And the government has seen fit to reward the leeches for the purpose of bringing about socialism in the United States. After all, what happens when the economy fails? It’s time for the government to hit the reset button.

When the reset button is hit, the argument will be that capitalism has failed. There will be substituted for it a thing that looks like severely regulated capitalism. It’s socialism in disguise. The government has been slowly being reconfigured to manage the rate of the creation of wealth as well as the rate of trade. We’ve already had subsidies and interest rate control. There will be more.

The problem with socialism is that with a guaranteed paycheck, few are motivated to work efficiently. That’s why socialist governments breed some of the poorest countries. People allowed to earn what they can make by working effectively and efficiently will be motivated to create plenty of wealth and an economy can thrive.

Once again, the point of this article: If no one works, no one gets paid. If no one gets paid, no one works.

In a socialist state, people get paid a pittance regardless of the work they do. They will therefore labor to produce only a pittance. Since they only produce a pittance, the government can only afford to pay them a pittance.

It’s coming.

And the only way out is to trust God. Because money is increasingly worthless.

(It brings a depth of meaning to the rich young man in Matthew 19. No?)

Do You Have Faith in Your Faith?

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”

And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” Matthew 14:22-33

Throughout the gospels, Christ performs miracles commending people for their faith and claiming that it was on account of the people's faith that the miracle took place. This has led some groups to conclude that if someone wants a miracle, all they have to do is have enough faith and it will happen. The resulting fallacious conclusion is that if your miracle doesn't happen, then you didn't have enough faith.

So we hear about pseudo-Christian parents who deny medical help for their children because they have faith that God will heal them. And when their children die because they didn't receive medical care and they wonder with anger at how the media makes a big deal out of the fact that charges are brought against them for negligence.

My kids love to recount the story how the man in a flood turned down evacuation by bus, boat and helicopter because he had faith that God would rescue him. When he reached heaven after drowning, he asked God why he didn't rescue him and God replied, "I sent a bus, a boat and a helicopter. What more did you want?"

Peter called out to Christ in faith, "Command me to come to you on the water." In faith Peter was able to walk on the water. But faith in what? He knew he couldn't walk on the water without Christ's command. But he also knew that he needed faith of his own in order to walk on water otherwise unaided. So Peter also had faith in his faith.

However, when Peter saw the wind and the waves, his faith waned and he sunk in the water. In his sinking, he called out to Christ, "Lord, save me." He still had faith, otherwise he would have no reason to call out to Christ to save him. What had changed is that he he no longer had faith in his faith.

Do we boast in our faith or do we recognize our own weak faith? If we had faith like a grain of mustard seed, then we could tell a mountain to move it would obey. (Mat 17:20) Clearly, we don't have the faith of a mustard seed. Perhaps our attitude should be that of the father of a demon-possessed boy who told Jesus, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24)

Christ asked the disciples in the boat, "Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?" The question was rhetorical. The answer is that we will have doubt. But Peter was there soaked but completely un-drowned. The question should help us conclude that even if we had Christ in person standing before us working miracles with the example of Peter that we could do the same, we would not have enough faith.

Peter himself worked many miracles from Pentecost on, but taught this about faith:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and l unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and a gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. 1 Peter 1:3-9; 20-21

Inasmuch as faith is trusting in Christ, I dare say it is unfaithful to trust in our faith. We must have faith in Christ alone. Our faith may falter, but Christ is faithful to save all who the Father has given him.

Beneficial Faith and the Gospel of Christ

I've seen a lot of blogs posting links to this remarkable article written by Matthew Parris, an atheist, entitled As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God. Read the whole article. I want to cite some of what he wrote:

The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

He observes that Christian faith liberates the mind. However, he is unwilling to himself have that freedom for his own mind. It's one thing to acknowledge the truth. It's another thing to think the truth applies to you. The man has a faith of sorts and acknowledges it as such:

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

What's more astonishing is that he recognizes that the Christian faith is spiritual, real, and good:

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

Umm. If it's spiritual, real and good then why not have it? This leads me to an observation. If knowing and believing isn't enough to have faith, then we must conclude that faith comes from some other source. Is it that he has simply choosen not to have faith? I imagine that he simply doesn't believe that God exists. At this point a toughtful atheist can't argue that faith is a product of evolution; otherwise we'd all have faith. While he accurately observes that faith in Africa is spread through the missionaries who bring the gospel of Christ, he himself doesn't have this faith. Presenting the information isn't sufficient for producing faith. It's like pointing out all the people who have died of emphysema to a smoker who already has a bad cough and watching the smoker himself become diagnosed with emphysema and continue to smoke until his lungs are too weak to take a drag. The truth is evident and the evidence abundant, even in the life of the atheist. So, why not have faith while one can?

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Romans 12:3

Faith is a gift of God.

The Duplicity of the Human Mind

I get into the occasional debate. As a Christian, one thing I notice is that people often don't believe what they believe for the reasons they say they believe. Let me unpack this somewhat.

People most often believe a thing for the reason that such a thing was normalized in their life. Through a continuity of exposure to a lifestyle or an ideology people become convinced that something is normal or true.

This is often not enough to create a firm belief especially when this exposure is unpleasant in some way. For example, many children rebel against the ideology of their parents when the ideology is enforced in an unpleasant way. Let's say a couple are involved in a church that is legalistic. They may observe that some of the children of the church grow up to be as legalistic as their parents because the legalism is positively reinforced in the home. However, this particular couple don't themselves joyfully adhere to the legal requirements of their church and only negatively reinforce them in the home. The children will grow up resenting the legalism and develop a reactionary ideology.

In either case, adherence to an ideology is initially formed in the human mind through experiential means.

Down deep, most people realize that these experiential beliefs need to have a more solid foundation to reinforce them. They need a better reason for believing these things to be true. This is often not even a conscious realization in people. What happens is that as similar beliefs are espoused in the marketplace of ideas through media, education, and associations with likeminded people more intellectual reasons are developed for believing something to be true.

When a person takes the challenge of their beliefs to a debate, it is these intellectual arguments that they offer for why they believe something to be true. The real reason they believe it to be true is often never espoused. By this time, most people are barely aware of why they really believe something to be true.

If the belief is strong enough and the belief is untrue, they will cling even to irrational intellectual arguments as though they are rational. Often, this clinging serves to distort their capacity to reason.

In a later post I hope to look at some of Christ's wise answers to people and observe how he answered them. All the arguments He made that I can think of off the top of my head suggest that He answered their hidden reason for believing something to be true while ignoring the intellectual obfuscation we too often get involved with.

More later...

What is Faith?

Andrew at the City of God states very clearly what faith is. I couldn't have said it better myself:

Something amazing, and yet incredibly simple, occurred to me today.

Faith is trusting in the good God whom we know even when we don’t know how He is consistent with the things we see.

Since we know this good God, we know everything must be consistent with Him in some way, but we can’t always explain how. Faith is simply not suppressing that knowledge in those situations.

This means that, from a philosophical/apologetical perspective, there is absolutely no evidence against the existence of the Christian God, since God has a) revealed Himself to us, and b) made clear there will be times when we have to fight off the temptation to claim we don’t know Him because of our ignorance about how some things are consistent with him. Thus, in an ironic way, situations that seem inconsistent with God and His goodness serve to prove His goodness nonetheless.

Or to put this all another way: there is no neutrality when it comes to God, and God really does exist.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

For we walk by faith, not by sight.

And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” … Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.

Of Confidence

I stand on the precipice of reality
Overlooking the valley of dreams
Wondering
If I take a step forward
Will I stand on solid ground?

Infidelity and Divorce Among the Faithful

Emotional attraction is a mysterious thing to me. It seems that there are so many factors in the attraction equation. In all cases, the question of attraction can be boiled down to one observation, and that is this: that one is attracted to something or someone because there is a need that one perceives, often not consciously or deliberately, that the object of the attraction can meet. We tend to be attracted to people for friendship because the personality of certain others is such that we wish to identify with them. They may resonate with us in some way or exhibit characteristics that we don’t have, but wish we did.

I’m attracted to unique individuals because I am a unique individual and most everyone else has a level of predictability that fails to stimulate me interpersonally. We may choose a certain automobile because we think that others will see us favorably, or at least more accurately, behind the wheel. I know people who drive vans and call them SUVs. Why? Because they perceive a certain sociological stigma with driving a van and they fear being identified as one who is in such mean estate as to warrant driving a van.

One thing my wife and I learned in premarital counseling is that it is unreasonable to expect one’s spouse to meet all of one’s emotional needs. We are to be identified with one another explicitly, exclusively, mutually and mortally with regard to our marital covenant. However, while we are principally and in principle to meet one another’s needs, realistically we will each have needs that may preclude our capacity to fulfill our purpose from time to time. God is certainly aware of this.

No married couple is an island. We have the sociological context of family, church and community, all of which may overlap. We must develop good relationships with those outside the marriage who likewise support our marriage. When the struggles of daily life present the temptation to play the Adam, Eve and serpent blame game, we need the ear of someone who won’t be put off by the disclosure of our distress and who is trustworthy to provide the proper perspective on the sacrificial service we are called to bear for our spouse.

The divorce rate is alarmingly high. The divorce rate among Christian churchgoers is no different than that outside the church. Perhaps it is because mature Christians don’t cohabitate sans marriage like many non-Christians. If you throw the breakups of cohabitating couples into the statistical mix, then a striking difference may be noted. Nevertheless, Christians should not be divorcing each other.

What has changed to cause the divorce rate has escalated? Perhaps it is that sociological expectations have changed. Commitment to a marriage was once expected of spouses by those who knew them and had some influence in their lives. But the influence of others has changed. Wher we were once influenced locally by others who knew us, we have been increasingly influenced by the opinions of celebrities in the media who decidedly don't know us.

Who gives others influence over our lives? We do. However, it is a sign of weakness to allow others to have influence over us. We know this because we allow those who espouse such a view to have influence over us. We see the view espoused in movies. We see popular people and strong leaders who have other bend their will to theirs by for no other reason than they have a charisma that draws other people to them - not because they are particularly wise.

The people who should have influence over us are those who who would improve our marriage. First, our spouse, inasmuch as he or she is obedient to Christ. Secondly, our freinds and family inasmuch as they are obedient to Christ. Thirdly, our church family and ministers inasmuch as they are obedient to Christ. Christ established the pattern for a marriage in the willingness to sacrifice all for your spouse.

The same sociological degredation that is destroying our marriages also causes distrust in the community at large. We suspect, often correctly so, that when others ask how we are doing today they don't really want to know the truth. We are often more concerned with whether we are being awkward than with building true friendships. We don't engage others on a level where they are in a position to influence us positively because we don't trust that they will actually want to help us. Furthermore, and not so tangentially, the homosexual agenda has caused otherwise straight people to fear this sociological intimacy that is necessary for personal influential accountability.

When we don't recieve the emotional intimacy we need through appropriate means, we are prone to percieve that the need can be met in otherwise inappropriate ways. A husband who finds himself attracted to a woman who is not his wife percieves that she will meet the needs that are not being met otherwise. For a church to handle an adulterous husband with proper church discipline is good. However, when the church fails to encourage the appropriate relationships that would have prevented the adultery in the first place, then the church as a body needs to repent for they have not ministered to the sinful man and encouraged righteousness. Indeed, the ills of fallen society have permeated our Christian fellowship.

I've become increasingly convicted of this and have sought to find a means to encourage the growth of a men's ministry in my church which has a corporate foundation, but draws on the strength of the personal invesment of individuals in the ministry. A program will fail, but changing sociological expectations is the only way to succeed in changing the viability of marriages in the church. If you are a Christian man, I encourage you to take steps in your own church to these ends for it is only on a local level through the actions of individuals that this trend will change and we will become truly faithful to Christ in our marriages.

What's the Measure of Your Heart?

"A heart is not judged by how much you love but by how much you are loved by others." The Wizard of Oz (to the Tin Man)

Are you lovable? None of us are intrinsically lovable. One might wonder if the Wiz even had it right. It's true that we are commanded by Christ to love, but is that the measure of our heart?

I've been editing a video of our recent Christmas Concert at church. Right now, I'm waiting for the final cut of the second piece to export. It has 40 more minutes. What's missing from it is some fantastic camera work done by a girl studying cinematography in college. She even brought a good high-definition video camera from school. it uses the same miniDV tapes that mine does. When she was done, she gave me the tapes. I took them home and found out that the high-def format isn't playable on my camera. There was no way for me to capture the video she took with her camera.

We met at church, she with her camera and I with my laptop and had a capture party. After fiddling with the hardware to get the computer to recognize the camera, we were off. We captured all the video and I got to see the great closeups she got. A few hours later we were finished and I had some great video saved to files on my hard drive - or so I thought. When I got home, I found the files and tried to play them. They were blank except for some video that she shot with my camera. The format wasn't compatible with my software. I just don't have the capacity to process high-definition video. The greatest video I have are clips I can't use. All that work for nothing.

What is the measure of the value of the video? Is it merely utilitarian? That's what I'm tempted to say here. The high-def clips are useless. They exceed the capacity of the program. They outshine the quality of the other video but no one will ever see them. I have the tapes and no means to play them or use them. They will not make the final cut. However, their value transcends their usefulness. In them is encoded the greatest expression of the Christmas program that I have and I will treasure what they represent.

The pattern of Christ is encoded in creation. The Bible is inerrant and is our certain source of truth. However, truth exists outside the text of the Bible inasmuch as it agrees with the text of the Bible. This truth is to be sought for its intrinsic value. This is why I used the quote from the Wizard of Oz. I'll also use this song from Icicle Works:

Love Is Full Of Wonderful Colour

My friend and I, were talking one evening,
Beside some burning wood,
Trading tales of places we came upon,
When the times were good,

Spoke of a girl he viewed like no other,
Whom he had come to know,
I swallowed hard and listened intently,
Resigned beside the glow...

Always there, it's standing proudly,
When all else falls down,
It's all around you, didn't it find you,
When you said you couldn't be found,

When love calls me, I will be running swiftly,
To find out just what all the fuss is all about,
Unrelentless, deep in the strangest feelings,
Believe me, love is full of wonderful colour...

I insist that you pick the wrong one,
To preach your theories to,
Simmer down, we'll run for a reason,
To see what faith can do,

Love is a beacon, on the horizon,
Watch when you touch down,
Reality finds you fumbling for reasons,
when the chance comes 'round

Take my confidence to guide you,
Through the fallen hope inside you,
Love is full of wonderful colour

Who knows precisely what the composer really meant by these words. This is a style of writing that is often nebulous although it sounds deep. however, there are some things to note that are pertinent to my observation here. Although, "a girl he viewed like no other" seems to indicate that the value is in the one who loves, he's talking about being loved: "didn't it find you, When you said you couldn't be found". "Take my confidence to guide you, through the fallen hope inside you." While these words can be interpreted different ways, the measure of our heart is not in that we love, but that we are loved. When we have hope in no other and when we are alone in this world, the value of our heart is in the love that we are given by God.

I love the word "confidence". We usually attribute this to someone who is self-assured. However, the word literally means "with faith". In whom do we have faith? If we measure the value of our heart by our own capacity to love, we have faith in ourselves. If we measure the value of our heart by how much we are loved, we have faith in another. "...we'll run for a reason, To see what faith can do, Love is a beacon, on the horizon." Do we operate according to our own capacity to understand or do we have a sure source of guidance?

I'm not referencing the Bible for a reason here. This is a truth that is easily found in the Bible. Do you know it well enough to find it in there? If not, then perhaps you don't know the love that God has for you. It is a truth that is pervasive enough for the Wizard of Oz to pick up on it as well as the decidedly secular New Age band, Icicle Works.

God loves you enough to come to this world in the person of the Son, born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. He loves you enough to pay the penalty for your inability to love and your status as one who is unlovable. Nevertheless, He loves you. The value of your heart is contingent not on your failed attempts at love, but on God's perfect love for you. The value of your heart is not contingent on a truth that you can invent on your own, but on the truth the God gives us. Pick up the Bible and learn the truth about His love if you don't already know it.

God bless you this Christmas season.