Finances and Faith

Sometimes I feel self-conscious when I say I'm an economics major because I don't really understand the economy. When I say this to people, they reassure me that no one does. Nonetheless, I've been learning more about the economy recently especially with all the crazy stuff happening in the financial world. Today I heard Ravi Zacharias quote something which was really transformative for me in the way I see finances and faith, and I'll share my thoughts with you guys about that.

To begin with, the oils that keep the engine of this economy running are cash and credit. You know what cash is; quarters, nickels, dimes, dollar bills. You can exchange dollar bills for goods, such as turkey or a shiny new car. These bills don't really have any value in themselves, but people like them because of what they can get in exchange for them. There was a big debate a long time ago about having money backed by silver or gold, meaning that you could exchange bills for these precious metals if you wanted, which would give these paper bills solid value. As it is now, they're not backed by anything.

These paper bills are kinda like poker chips. If we were to walk to a poker table and wanted to play, we'd have to pay some money to get some blue and red chips to play with. At the table, we'd gamble using these blue and red chips, and once the game is over, we'd exchange these poker chips for our money again. It's the same kind of deal with these paper bills. They're not really worth anything outside of this game we're playing, but they can be exchanged for things we want, so that's why we want them.

Next, there's credit. In college (and now) I would try not to spend much money. One way I thought I could limit my spending was to carry less cash with me, because if I carried less cash, I'd be less tempted to spend. The problem was that my friends would often go out to eat, meaning that my friends would often have to end up spotting me. The bill would come around and they'd pay for my meal, and I'd pay them back once I got money from the ATM. Credit cards are kinda like that. The credit card company will spot you money for a month up to a certain amount, and at the end of the month, you get a credit card bill. You have a month to pay the credit card bill; you can pay the full amount, in which case (for the credit card I have) you'd pay no interest. If you pay less than the full amount, you pay interest for what you still owe.

I was introduced to commodities this past summer by a friend. Some people are really worried about inflation, and there are some who are worried about hyperinflation. A rough definition of hyperinflation is when the money that you're using is worth more as toilet paper than money. How does that happen? Well, think about if a bunch of us were at a meal, and there was just one juicy piece of steak. We'd all really want it and might be willing to trade half a salad for some of that steak. But if there were a million steaks, then no one wants to trade anything for steak because everyone has so much of it anyway. Same thing for money. If the government keeps printing out exorbitant amounts of money, then the money we have becomes pretty much worthless.

That's why advocates of commodities such as gold and silver say people should buy gold and silver during times where the currency is unstable. Your dollar may lose its value, but gold has universal value whatever country you go to, and it'll have value even if the economy collapses. Even if it goes down in value it doesn't have the potential to plummet in value like the dollar does, so the incentive is usually more about security than profit. I started tracking the value of silver earlier this summer, and it was about $13 per ounce in July, and $12 per ounce in early August. Now it's about $16, so it seems like it would have been a good buy. Not sure where it's going to go from here, though.

One thing cash, credit, and commodities all have in common is that they all promise us things. Material possessions in the form of shiny new cars (even ones we can't afford), a comfortable life, a secure future. Maybe even love? The Beatles say "can't buy me love," but... it does at least seem that you can. We evaluate potential mates on a variety of levels like personality, maturity, physical appearance, and so on. More money means increased social status, and so while money might not help you get that particular girl, it probably will help you get a girl in general. I can get you these things, money says... a nice car, a secure future, and a pretty girl, I can get you all these things.

What I began to see more clearly today is that these are promises being made. Cash, credit, commodities promise to provide us with the things that make us happy, and we buy into that promise. If you really didn't trust the dollar bill, you'd put into Euros or Yen or Gold like my friend who got me interested in that stuff. But you do trust it enough, so you keep your money in dollar bills.

What the recent financial craziness has shown is that none of this 100% sound. Our currency may hyperinflate, leaving all our cash worthless. Our credit system basically exploded on us, which was the big cause of the recession. And gold... during the Great Depression, the government issued a recall on gold, saying that you had to turn in the gold you had. And if you're hiding your gold, well, that can always get stolen.

Nonetheless, our economy is running on these assumptions. We believe that it's likely enough that these things won't happen, so we keep living as if they won't. We save money in the belief that tomorrow I can bring that cash to the store and get food with it. I'm banking on the fact that these banks and financial institutions will made good on their promises and deliver. I'm trusting in the fact that all these people, all these institutions, will follow through with what they say. I'm putting trust in them.

The quote I heard Ravi Zacharias make today was "the whole world runs on the basis of faith," even the financial world. That statement is so true. I'm working in the field of construction management now, where the contract is king. A contract is basically an agreement between two parties where they agree to something, such as, I pay you this amount of money if you will do this for me. Without people agreeing to make contracts, no one would be able to do anything. I could go to a store and give them the money for a product, but they could just refuse to uphold their end of the deal. If no one believed the promises of another, the world would cease to function.

Mark Twain once said, "faith is believing what you know ain't so." He entirely misunderstands faith. Faith is simply putting your trust in something. When I decide to use a boat, it's entirely possible it'll start sinking. But I have reason to believe it won't, and I act on that reason. It's like I'm saying to the boat, I believe that you will keep me afloat. The question is really how trustworthy is the object of faith? The fact that there is faith involved does nothing to disqualify the object, or the promise.

I had some more thoughts in that same vein about faith, but they'll have to go unsaid for now. The last thing I'll share, though, is that shortly after thinking these things I read 1 Kings 17:3. It's a drought, and God tells Elijah "Leave here, turn eastward, and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there." That's a pretty big promise. God is saying that in this drought he will command nature itself to provide for Elijah.

In the face of a promise like this, the question is can God make good on his promise? Can we take this promise to the bank and cash in on it? Exactly how reliable is God with things like this, can he do this, and if so, will he do it? In the Christianized way of saying it, do I have faith?

Yeah, I believe it. God's good for his word. If he promises something, he will follow through with it, and I can put money on that. Cash, credit, commodities, and every other earthly thing may fail me, but whether I'm in the middle of a drought or recession, God can command nature itself to provide for me. So if God, who is always able to deliver on his promises, and who always will deliver on his promises, says "and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age," then I can have great confidence that His provisions for me will always be sufficient.

Shampoo Tropicana

Hello, sorry that I'm updating so little. I still have a follow up to that previous post that I need to write. In the meantime, enjoy reading these two odd dreams I've had recently. The first I had last weekend, the second I had this past weekend.

By the way, if you can interpret my dreams, I will give you up to half my kingdom. Maybe.

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Shampoo Warriors

I'm travelling on an adventure with a couple of my friends. There's some kind of jungle and cave-like scenery, and we're fighting baddies as we progress. Every once in a while there's a boss fight where my friends and I have to defeat a strong enemy. Upon our victory, the enemy leaves behind a shampoo bottle that, if held, allows you to use two abilities. The primary ability is an offensive capability (fire, lightning, etc.), and the secondary ability is a support ability (restore health, posion cure, etc.). In particular, I remember holding a sky-blue shampoo bottle and firing lightning bolts.

We continue on our journey and eventually we're fighting through a castle-cave sort of place, an area that has large cavern-rooms with balconies on the walls. After a fight, we were in need of the healing ability of the water-colored shampoo bottle. I put my backpack down and start rummaging around for the bottle. Everything's all messy and it's difficult to find things, so I start taking out the bottles so that I can find the one I need more easily. As I'm taking out all these shampoo bottles I start getting self-conscious. What if someone sees me with all these shampoo bottles in my backpack and thinks I'm really vain??? Then I woke up.

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Tropicana Battle

I'm with two friends, one guy and one girl, in a shopping mall that looks kind of like a Wallgreens or Longs Drugs. We're being chased by a couple of people that look like humans, but are actually robots. They're pretty much invincible but we discover that they can be slowed down if we spray stuff into their eyes. We use a variety of cleaning agents, like Windex and 409. In particular I find this spray can (the metal kind; looks like a metal cylinder with a nozzle on top) that is particularly effective. It is a Tropicana spray bottle. I don't think it was orange juice, but certainly it looked like it had the Tropicana orange juice label on the can. Maybe Tropicana orange-flavored deodorant spray?

We're still running around the store attempting to escape from the robots, every so often turning around to spray the robot in the eyes with the spray. When hit, the robot's eyes glaze over with a black film, looks kinda like black oil from the X-Files. Only I have a spray can, and we realize we should acquire more cans for my friends. We reach the spot, but Tim Choi is there to stop us (a Junior from Gracepoint). He refuses to allow us have the spray can.

I pin him down and attempt to force him (read: torture) to relinquish the Tropicana spray can, but he stubbornly continues to refuse. I start feeling bad because I like the guy, and think that it was just fate that made us end up on opposite sides in this conflict. I hear another group of my friends from a different aisle, yelling for us to throw them a spray can because they're under attack from the robots. I begin pushing Tim's head harder and start screaming at him to give us the can, but he still refuses.

Eventually we're able to get the can and we run over to the next aisle to aid our friends, but the tide has already turned against us, and it was all chaos. Then I woke up.

Hebrews 11:35

How could I possibly hope for a better ressurection if I cannot weather life's mildest of storms?

Hell? Really?

The details are not exact, but this one day I was washing dishes at a friend's house and I heard a mother and her two little children playing outside. We were next door to a church of scientology or something of that sort, and they were playing in the church's playground. The kids were pretty hyper, running around and having a blissful time. The mother was kinda just watching over them, not actively playing with them but making sure they were safe and pushing them on the swings every now and then. They were all enjoying themselves in a kind of fun, peaceful way.

And I thought to myself, according to my beliefs, this mother is going to hell (granting the assumption that she's not a Christian). Wow. Do I really believe this? I mean, yes I believe it. But what I'm acknowledging intellectually is difficult to bring to bear with what is before my eyes, a mother playing with her children.

In a classroom it's a little easier to say yes, man is totally depraved. In an act of cosmic insurrection he has displaced God's rightful place on the throne of his life and taken it for himself, and for that justice demands wrath. Moreover, condemnation to hell, eternal damnation, is God saying to the sinner, "thy will be done"; it's allowing the person the dignity of their choice, and when we rebel and refuse to stop our rebellion, hell is allowing us that choice.

I keep washing the dishes, and I think, but still. This mother playing with her children? Eternal damnation?

I have more to say about this, but, I'd like you the reader to comment what you guys think about that. Comments is the funs.

Mind and Muscle

For various reasons I've been doing the Grace Valley reading schedule recently instead of the Gracepoint one for DT's. Grace Valley Christian Center is my friend's church in Davis, and for their reading schedule they read a couple of books from the Old and New testaments every day. It's been going over 1 Samuel recently.

One thing that strikes me about David during his time as a fugitive is his complete reliance on God. In 1 Samuel 26, he's running for his life with his ragtag band of followers and he hears the news that the Israelite city of Keilah is under attack by the Philistines. He inquires of the Lord whether he should go save Keilah. The Lord answers in the affirmative, but David's men are afraid, saying that as it is they're scared for their lives, and how much more if they try to take on these Philistines. David inquires again, the Lord answers again with a promise of victory. David and his small band go and defeat the Philistines, saving the city of Keilah.

How do I face difficulty? Come up with a better plan, try harder. Mind and muscle. David's certainly intelligent, strong, and brave, but he takes no stock in these things. In an honest assessment of the situation, the soldiers were right; they didn't have the military capacity to be going of and fighting whole armies of Philistines while they were running for their own lives, they didn't have the strength, it wasn't a strategic move. But David, a man after God's own heart, relies entirely on the Lord for his strength, and in simple obedience fights the Lord's battle and emerges victorious.

This is the only way to face life. Things are too uncertain for me to take stock in myself. God is faithful, God loves me; neither death nor life, neither angles nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus my Lord. These are the truths I need to grab hold of, and only in these things, not myself, can I have stability and certainty and security.

Proximate Responsibility

So I've had this view on responsibility for a while that I'd like to sketch out in brief, though I've touched on it in my post "Demandingness and Compassion Sunday." First off, something I first heard in a moral psychology class. Let's say that I'm walking along and I see that there's a baby drowning in a pond. I don't want to ruin the nice dress pants I'm wearing so I just keep walking along and let the baby drown. This is clearly NOT an appropriate reaction. Despite the loss of my treasured pants, the loss of time, and the uncomfortability of wetting my socks, the moral duty to save the baby clearly outweighs any such considerations. The right thing to do is to say "oh my gosh a baby is drowning," and immediatly jump in and save the baby.

Okay, so saving a life is more important than retaining your nice set of cloths and that 10 minutes. Why do we not give that same amount of money to prevent a child in Africa from starving to death? It seems that the inconveniences that we once mocked as uncaring and selfish we now cling to in our defense; we'd rather spend that money on slightly better meals, morning coffee, and a shiny new pair of shoes than the starving kid. Point granted: we really ought to care about the affairs of others, even those in foreign countries, more than we do instead of spending all of our resources on many of our own concerns which are in comparison trivial.

However, one assumption that's implicit in the comparison is that you know for sure that your ten dollars is gonna save the starving kid. Quite likely, a good portion of that is going to be consumed by overhead transaction costs and corruption. You don't know for sure that your money is going to save the kid, and so that uncertainty does play a role. It doesn't justify giving no money at all, but it does explain why you'd be more obligated to give money to save a starving child in front of you over a starving child a thousand miles away.

I think this idea of proximity is in part why Jesus said "love your neighbor as yourself," rather than a simple "love everybody as yourself." It's more concrete, and it's more sure. While we do have obligation to the starving child far away from us in Africa, our obligation is first and foremost to the starving children next to us. Most likely the people around us aren't starving; but they have real needs which we should be trying to meet.

This is in part how I deal with prioritization and how I choose what to do when there's many pressing obligations and things that would be good to do. The needs that are immediatly presented to me take priority; the people in front of me take priority. True, if this idea is taken to the extreme then it provides justification for neglecting people who ought not to be simply because we might think that we can't do anything or we don't know enough; and that self-justification of "it's okay not to care about this person because he's in the wrong category" is specifically addressed in the preceding story of the Good Samaritan. But, in summary, I think that decreased proximity increases responsibility.

Anyway. I should be studying more for the lsat. But it's far away =)

Fish and Man

"Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream." (Malcolm Muggeridge)

Today is the lucky day when you, the reader, can offer me assistance! Got a couple of questions for all ya'll. First off, I've recently discovered that some people for whom I am responsible have been cheating in a class. What would you do?

Here's a question posed by a friend of mine. Let's say you lived in a part of China where the only way you can do business is to give bribes to the government officials regulating the process. Would you do it?