No consequences

This evening, one of our deacons was doing the prayer meeting. His lesson was out of the book of James, chap. 1, but probably could have used any of a couple dozen other chapters of about half the books of the Bible and had the same effect. He was talking about the verbs, the action--do it--words. Every one of the actions has a result, and each of the "don't do it" verbs have a consequence. As you might guess the consequence of the don't do its are not that pleasant.

It got me to thinking that we have a society today that lives without consequences, and I believe that some, if not much of our current financial meltdown are the result of living without consequences for too long.

When we first got a mortgage we got sucked into an adjustable rate situation which threatened to eat us up in about three years. We recognized that we would not be able to keep it up, and re-financed. Problems solved, but soon we'd been caught up in a situation with a bad furnace, a leaking garagge roof and the need for a new car....and we were over our heads again. Well, we had to cut back, and with another change in mortgage rates refinanced again. This time we learned our lesson and stayed withing our means.

Now people of all levels--and I do feel sorry for those who are losing or have lost their homes--are caught short because they'd never recognized that they were over their head in debt and dealt with it.

And then there are those who have been bailed out by the credit counselors and been able to repay only a portion of their debt, though in reality they'd probably already paid back more than what they'd ever charged by making minimum payments on a bunch or credit cards. But the point of it is that they've gotten away with not fulfulling their obligations. All too often, in a couple of years they're right back to the same position they were in before.

Our nation is in a bad financial spot, no two ways about it, but I fear that the national and global situation are either the natural result of the many small problems, or the small problems are end result of following the pattern set by the larger entities.

I hope this has made some sense.