Lux Lucet

The collapse of the United States and of the West fits this pattern.  In his 2006 Trinity Review “The Religious Wars of the 21^st Century,” John Robbins noted that, “civilizations do not come crashing down in a matter of months or even years,” and went on to write that, “The West has been in collapse for more than a century.” 

Some people may find Robbins’ assessment shocking.  For political conservatives, the 1960’s serves as a sort of continental divide separating the good old days from modern cesspool in which we now live.  But long before the 1960’s, as Robbins tells us, the Biblical theology that created the West began to disappear from the West.  And it is the disappearance of that theology, the theology of the Reformation, that has led us to the brink of disaster.       

Robbins continues,

That collapse [of the West] is marked by, or, more accurately, is the dissolution of the Biblical family (husband, wife, and children); the economic and political regimentation of the individual and business enterprises; government ownership and control of most educational institutions; the growth of crime; the waning of civility; the acceptance of public profanity, obscenity, and homosexuality; and the resurgence of brutality.  

To this list one could add the growing deficits and debts of America as well as the looming financial bankruptcy of the West in general and the United States in particular. 

The growing deficits and debts of the US federal government, as well as state and municipal governments is the direct result of Americans’ rejection of the Gospel of Justification by Belief alone and with it the Biblical idea of limited government. 

In his book Christ and Civilization, John Robbins quoted Steven Ozment about the political effects of the Reformation.  “’[W]hen the Reformation was consolidated in Rostock in 1534, it brought not only an end to the privileges of the clergy but also government agreement to reduce its own numbers by about one-third,’ and to submit to a detailed annual accounting” (41). To that same end, Robbins quotes Karl Holl, a professor of Church History at the University of Berlin who wrote, “’…it was the Reformation that first set a rigid limit to the absolute power of the State’” (41).

The idea of limited, constitutional government, a concept present at the very foundation of our nation, began to be rejected during the progressive era of the 1890’s – 1920’s.  That period in the United States saw the rise of the regulatory bureaucracy, the creation of the Federal Reserve, the imposition of the income tax and women’s suffrage.

It is no accident that this same period was marked by the rise of theological liberalism in formerly sound, Reformed denominations as well as the rise of Arminianism and the large-scale immigration of Roman Catholics and Jews.  The Reformed theological consensus that had been foundational to the American nation’s politics and economics was in the process of being shattered from forces both internal and external.  This is not because Arminians, Roman Catholics and Jews are inferior people, but because their ideas are inferior and incapable on creating or sustaining a free society. 

The demand for ever larger government did not stop with the end of the Progressive Era but was just getting started. Government interference in the economy received a huge boost during the decade of the 1930’s with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and then again thirty years later with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.          

The five plus decades since President Johnson have witnessed the continuing growth of government with whole new cabinet-level agencies being created: the Department of Education, the Department of Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency for example. 

But it’s not just the new, Progressive Era inspired agencies that are destroying our nation’s freedoms and finances, but older agencies such as the Department of Defense (DOD) are playing their part.  For example, the Pentagon’s 2020 fiscal year budget is a whopping $721 billion.  But for all the money sloshing around in the DOD’s coffers, the US military has shown itself incapable of winning the war in Afghanistan, now over 18 years old, or of even building a functioning aircraft carrier.     

The Financial Cost of Big Government

As of this writing, the current debt of the United States Federal Government stands at around $26.5 trillion.  This is the official number, at any rate.  Some would tell you it’s much worse than this, and they are probably right.  But for today, let’s just consider the official numbers, which are bad enough in themselves.

To put this number is perspective, consider that it took from the founding of our nation until 1982 to accumulate our first $1 trillion of debt.  The second trillion took only four more years.  During George W. Bush’s eight years in office, the debt went from around $5.6 trillion to over $10 trillion.  Obama’s eight years in office saw the debt go from $11.9 trillion to $19 trillion.  Trump, a Republican, has seen the debt increase from $19 trillion to the current $26.5 trillion in three plus years, and there is no end in sight. 

Not only has the debt at the federal level increased, but the rate of increase has been accelerating.  Since March of this year, when the CARES Act bailout package was passed by Congress in response to the Covid Pandemic – it is beyond the scope of the post to go into detail concerning the Covid-19 pandemic or the appropriateness of the government’s response to it; for now, I will say simply that it is this author’s conviction that the American public has been sold an authoritarian bill of goods that is destructive of our liberties, our finances and our health – the federal debt has ballooned from $23.6 trillion to $26.4 trillion.  To put this in perspective, consider that it took until 1982 for the United States federal government to accrue its first $1 trillion of debt. But it took only three months to add nearly $3 trillion here in 2020. 

Debt, it would seem, is going parabolic. 

The Debt Will Never and Can Never Be Repaid

The debt will never be repaid and will only grow from here on out until either the system implodes under the crushing debt load or those who run the system pull the plug preemptively and attempt some sort of reset.

Why do I say the debt will never be repaid?  The reason is simple: our current financial system, based as it is on a central bank issued, debt-based fiat dollar was designed from its inception as a perpetual debt machine. 

In a debt-based fiat currency system with compound interest, the debt must always expand to pay the interest on the current debt.  You see, the money to pay interest on the current debt does not yet exist.  And the only way to create the currency needed to service the interest in a debt-based system is to borrow it into existence. This is why a debt-based financial system, such as what was set up under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, is a road to inevitable financial perdition.   At some point, the debt can no longer be expanded fast enough to make the interest payments needed keep the system running and the whole thing collapses. 

All debt-based fiat monetary systems must end with debt and money supply going parabolic. How long does it go on?  Until the system reaches the point where the public loses faith in the currency and the whole thing comes crashing down.  Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises called the loss of faith in the currency and resulting debt implosion the crack-up boom.    

Debt-based currencies such as the US dollar and every other major currency known to this author are really just perpetual motion debt machines.  Not only do nations using debt-based currencies go further and further into debt over time, they MUST go further and further into debt to keep the system going.  There is no alternative. This is the evil inherent in debt-based currencies.  They force everyone to become debt slaves just to keep the system going.

Because a debt-based currency requires more and more debt to keep the system running, and because that debt mathematically must grow at a faster and faster pace, some observers have argued that the Covid-19 pandemic is really a ruse, one run by the masters of the universe in charge of the Fed and other world central banks, to expand the debt. If you shut down the economy and have to bail out everyone, you can use that as an excuse to expand the debt by $6 trillion, or whatever absurd sum the total CARES Act package supposedly is, thus deferring the inevitable day of financial reckoning.    

America is Bankrupt

As unpleasant as it is to face, America and the other nations of the West are bankrupt.  They never can repay their debts.  And the only “solution” to prevent a debt collapse in the present is to add more debt to a system drowning in debt!  This is exactly why you see massive increases in national debt as a result of the last two financial crises, the one in 2008 and the most recent one earlier this year. 

Here’s a prediction for the future: The bankers and politicians are not yet done adding to the debt.  Earlier this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated that the $1.3 trillion coronavirus relief bill being considered by Congress is “not enough” to bail out everyone who needs bailing out.  There will be additional, massive increases in spending not long after that, regardless of who wins the election in November. 

The current sad state of affairs in the United States, its moral and financial bankruptcy, is the inevitable result of America’s rejection of Christ in favor of non-Christian philosophy.

Due to massive monetary fraud on the part of the Federal Reserve and equally deceptive lies from the politicians, it is not yet obvious to most Americans that our financial system, indeed our very civilization, is bankrupt and headed for ruin.  People are fooled by talk of a coronavirus vaccine that will lead to a V-shaped recovery, a V-shaped recovery being an initial economic plunge followed by a rapid return to the pre-crisis status. 

America is bankrupt because we have forgotten the One who is the source of all truth and embraced the lie that you really can get something for nothing, that there really is such a thing as a free lunch, and that the politicians and central bankers are the ones who are going to give it to you.

America once was great because its pulpits once were great.  If anything of American civilization is going to be recovered from the present and coming political and economic train wreck, it will be because once again the Gospel of Justification by Belief Alone is taught from the pulpits and believed.     

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