MANIPULATING THE MARKET

I ran across an interesting verse today. "He who withholds grain, the people will curse him, but blessing will be on the head of him who sells it" (Proverbs 11:26). This particular chapter of Proverbs draws a lot of contrasts between the righteous & the unrighteous, & how they participate differently in the market.

One of the interesting things about this verse is what it doesn't say. It doesn't say that the one selling the grain should give it away, rather that he should not delay selling it. What happens if someone who controls the selling of commodities or goods purposely makes it scarce? It goes up in price (this is called "gouging" by some people). In effect, an artificial shortage is created for one party's benefit.

There are laws against businesses & companies doing this. When most of those operating in a free market willingly submit themselves to biblical principles, everyone benefits. When they don't, it is the responsibility of government to investigate & prosecute. 

That's because it is wrong for people to manipulate the market to benefit one party at the expense of another.

The same is true when government intervenes to "help" one class of people. Instead of investigating &/or prosecuting the individual or business, government's tendency is to create huge regulatory agencies that create their own regulations apart from any legislation.

What we have then is a whole bureaucracy manipulating the entire market, rather than an investigator looking at a particular case that may be worthy of prosecution.

There's a world of difference between the two. That's a large part of what has gone wrong with government in our country.

WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO HAVEN’T HEARD?

There is a lot of debate about what will happen to those who have never heard the Gospel, & those who live in areas of the world where the Gospel is not available.

There are a lot of arguments that theologians have put forth to make it seem that God has some kind of “Plan B” in cases where for whatever reason people who haven’t heard. Some of them make a lot of sense, & they appeal to our natural desire for things to work out for the best. 

The problem that I personally have with this idea is that it has practical implications if you follow it to its logical conclusion.

If God makes an exception & does have a way to save people who have never heard of Christ, then maybe it’s better if they don’t hear. After all, they might decide to reject Him & not be saved. So, if we don’t tell them, we can trust that God in His mercy will somehow save people in their state of ignorance.

So, by not taking the Gospel to others, we assure their salvation.

I don’t believe that Jesus meant that when He commissioned us to “Go into all the world & preach the Gospel.” 

TAKING A BREAK

I’ve been taking a little break from blogging for the last 6 weeks or so. Not on purpose. Several weeks were taken with classes at Asia Pacific Theological Seminary in Baguio City.

After that, we took a week to prepare for the arrival of a medical team, then from February 19-29 we hosted the team. We met the team in Manila, did day-long clinics as 5 churches, then accompanied them back to Manila for their flight home.

In between these busy times & activities, we have been trying to get a bunch of catch-up work in the office. And, I’ve had about 5000 pages of reading & just about 100 pages of writing for the classes I took in January & February. We’ve also got a trip home planned in a couple of weeks.

So, I took a little time off. But now hopefully…