It's Not News, It's CNN!

Author's note: this post was originally going to appear at Mazurland, but Marty's most recent post (which I saw as I was visiting the site to write the post) got me so ass-about-face that I decided to put it here instead. Take THAT!

So CNN presumably tells a reporter that they really want to drive home the story that the economy is in the tank, and the average American is totally screwed, redeemable only by the Obamessiah and his forthcoming Socialist New World Order "jobs program". Said reporter then probably decides that trying to find a nice sad-sack sob story of someone who lost their job because of the terrible economy, and is forced to subsist on meager government assistance and ramen noodles while they fruitlessly search for nonexistent jobs would be the best way to go about this. Typical awesome "journalism" that you might learn in a fancy college program that no lousy plumber could ever hope to accomplish, to be sure.

Anywho, said CNN reporter, a dynamo by the name of Jim Spellman, goes out and finds one Laura Glick, who the lede indicates was earning "six figures" before the downturn and now is hoping to get by on a "$7/hr job". But the devil, as they say, is in the details. The first flag to be raised: what was this magical job? She was a mortgage broker.

This should pretty much end the story right there. So somebody who made a lot of money during an economic boom which was based on unsound and predatory lending practices... made that money lending that very same money? And I'm supposed to feel sorry that the boom is over and she's out of a job?

But it gets better. In her misery, she has been without a job for seven months. Seven months! Why, because no one will pay her six figures to put people in homes they don't deserve and can't afford? I can understand the shock of finding your industry obsolete, but seriously, does it take you seven months to realize that "any job" is better than "no job"?

Oh, and she's on government assistance. $1400/month, apparently, in Colorado somewhere. I lived in Seattle-freakin'-Washington not THAT long ago on $1200/month. I paid my rent, I ate my food, I managed all my own personal expenses for that amount. Maybe rent has gone up, but maybe she's living beyond her means, meager though they may be.

And how has this downturn in her life impacted her lifestyle? From the article: "To get by she has stopped eating out, given up cigarettes and has stopped taking her pets to the vet for regular checkups." Well holy crap on a crap cracker, we've really hit rock bottom when we have to stop taking our pets to the vet for regular checkups!!! And notice the plural: how much better would you get by without paying for their food every month? And cigarettes? Not your precious life-shortening heavily taxed drug of choice, no! How on earth will you get by with healthier breathing, a longer lifespan, and a cleaner bloodstream? And the poor, poor woman, as if her pink lungs and unmonitored pet-health weren't a steep-enough price to pay -- now she can no longer afford to pay someone else to cook her meals for her! Oh tragedy of tragedies, the economy has truly sunk lower than the greatest of all depressions!

Seriously, CNN. If you're going to continue to peddle the doom-and-gloom (presumably to make way for the all-hail-the-Barachrist story on the first faint sign of an economic uptick), at least try. Maybe you can find a family that actually had to sell their SUVs, or move to a house that has fewer bedrooms than occupants, or something. But trying to make me feel sorry for a woman who was the cause of the problem in the first place, and got screwed? Not gonna work.

Economics and the Holy Spirit

I was just sitting there watching my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter veeery slowly eat dinner, regretting having given her a lollipop about half an hour before her meal, and the thought struck me how well my daughter understands the economics of incentives. Sure, it's easy enough for even the smallest child to grasp the concept of reward, and act to earn that reward. But she already earned her reward in this case, apropos of nothing. Thus, she was no longer motivated to eat a good dinner, because she had nothing to gain from it (well, except tasty chili-cheese mashed potatoes, but apparently that's not her cup o' tea). Had I only showed her the sucker and told her that it would be given to her after she ate a good dinner, she would have eaten much faster.

What does this have to do with the Holy Spirit? Well, everything. We as Christians have received a free gift of eternal life from God through Christ Jesus. It is not the result of works or deeds which we have done in righteousness; Scripture is clear on this matter. Thus, our motivation for doing good and living moral lives is gone; we have received and been guaranteed our reward simply by faith in Jesus Christ. Sure, we are told to do good works, repeatedly and at great length. But because of this guarantee, there is no explicit incentive to do good. Both the carrot and the stick are removed; we already have eternal life, and Hell no longer awaits us.

Sure, there are groups among the Body of Christ who perhaps make too much of certain passages of Scripture, but now is not the time for that particular debate. Still others assert (and this I would vehemently debate to my last breath) that indeed our good deeds, our moral lives are indeed what save us; this is a debate that has unfortunately reared its head throughout the Church's history. But let us take it for a given that Scripture does indeed teach that eternal life is a free gift, and move on.

So stripped of all incentives, Christians by and large ought to be an indolent, loutish lot, right? After all, all they have to do is hurry up and die, and eternal bliss is theirs. Well, apparently the research is in, and this is not so. Now the article linked there, and the corresponding book by Arthur Brooks, focus more on the political divide, but let us make the assumption (which the liberal and secular left do on a daily basis, so why can't we?) that "conservative and religious" correlates quite highly with "orthodox Christian". I'd have to read the book itself to really see how it breaks down along specific religious lines, but since there are only so many hours in the day, I'll just say it's a safe assumption.

Thus, normal, human, natural incentives are stripped away from the Christian, and yet he continues to do good. Therefore, there must be some inhuman force at work in the life of the Christian that compels him to do good, not for a reward, but as an end unto itself. This force, of course, is the Holy Spirit, statistically writ large across Christian culture in comparison with others.

And this brings the argument of grace-based salvation full circle: if we include works as a necessary act for salvation, we can attribute man's good works to his own interal desire for eternal life; on the other hand, if the incentive for doing those works is taken away, the motivation to do good works is based solely on the indwelling and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In the former, man is glorified along with God; in the latter, the glory belongs to God alone.

Great, now I feel all Calviny again. But I'm really more of an Arminianist, I swear!

post script: The Wee One, sure as the day is long, didn't finish her dinner. When is that age of spiritual accountability again?