Stefan, a neighbor was spending some time with us yesterday. He knows way more better about the finance world than both of us together. He explained to us the evolution of money in 5 minutes. Here is the sum of what he said.
In the ancient days the transaction of commodities happened in a very simple and easy way. A farmer could get the necessary farmings tools that he needed in exchange for the right quantity of grains that he provided. ‘I give you this, if you give me that.’ Deal closed.
As trading widened and the wants increased, the perishable goods were replaced by the nonperishable goods, usually metals like copper, silver, gold, etc. Transferring large quantities of metal money from one place to the other for the sake of security and convenience was substituted by a written form of paper called Bill of exchange. This written form of paper basically had a backup of precious metals as property.
Later a shortage of metals and the ever increasing needs of our rulers to rule and to control gave birth to money without backup. In 1973 the United States totally abandoned the Gold standard which was the backup commodity of paper money. And the US dollar became the world currency. Other countries fixed their exchange rate against US dollars. This quiet breakage of link with precious metals, is now substituted by the country’s production and productivity of goods and services it offers.
And this has caused ordinary people like you and me not to grasp the entity of money and how it works. This abstract paper money controls our economy, confidence, trust and our security. And we have accepted it to be the standard form of our life.
As he was explaining my mind was racing back to how God traded with humankind. And how quick we end up digging our own graves?
He said if you eat this you will die; if you don’t, you live. So simple and easy. He says, if you obey me, I will bless you; if you don’t, I will curse you. But the humankind wanted more. For the sake of convenience, we replaced God with human leaders. And with the shortage of good human leaders, God again intervened and sent his Son as a backup to rescue us, providing us the security, the guarantee for eternity, the gold standard. But we cut the link with this precious cornerstone; we started to rely on the works of our own hands, our institutions, our churches, our programs, our leaders, and abandoned the King and his Kingdom who is the very backup that we represent. Even worse, we ask him to represent us! ‘God please bless what we do.’
I’m asking for myself, with all the abundance of Churchianity that is available, why does the Kingdom of God remain elusive? Have we caused a spiritual inflation through the abundance of church activities and programs and productivity that lacks the King’s backup? What is our backup? What the King says or the nice programs that are so vague and abstract but satisfies our church consumers for reasons of convenience and harmony? It rather urges us to burst the bubble of churchianity and reduce it to its true size, than raise hopes of bailout, new methods, new models and trends, new anointed preacher and burden the people of God to pay for it. Well, lets not even start to discuss about spiritual recession and depression.
