My maternal grandfather, Wally, passed away in 2008. He was 93. He was old enough to remember the Great Depression as a teenager in Columbia, Missouri. He would hold my attention adeptly as he spun yarns about his parents playing Pitch with neighbors as a free form of entertainment, neighborhood vegetable gardens and tight-knit communities.
He married a wonderful woman, Opal Mae Teed (for whom my younger daughter is named), and together they bought their first house in Chillicothe, Missouri for a paltry $13,000 (of course, it was not a meager sum in the 1950s). They lived frugal lives, hardly ever borrowing money for anything, and I wouldn't hesitate to say that borrowing money to buy the house probably caused them significant turmoil. You see, they wanted to make sure they lived WELL within their means.
Fast forward one generation to my parents' generation. Certainly a bit more liberal with the use of credit. They would borrow to buy a car, and would likely have one or two credit cards, but most people in my parents' generation were likely to conscientiously pay off the credit card each month, and not go out and buy some extravagant vehicle that they would finance for 8 years.
My generation has taken the leap into the abyss. We finance everything. We finance houses, cars, furniture, dental work, cosmetic surgery, appliances, motorcycles, education, private school tuition, exclusive preschool tuition, fishing boats...heck, we even use credit cards to pay for Taco Bell, gasoline even tithes and offerings.
I'm pretty sure that my grandparents' generation would like to leap forward in time (I'm asking for a reasonable suspension of disbelief) and slap the living daylights out of us.
What has happened to us?
When did the wheels fly off this train?
When did it become okay to live consistently beyond our means?
How have we not been awakened by the current economic crisis?
You see, I think that the economic crisis suffers from the same probably as 9/11. In the days immediately following 9/11, we huddled together in a show of patriotic solidarity against the forces that wanted to see our demise. But after six months (perhaps longer), the Kum-Ba-Yah spirit faded, and we were back to bitter partisan divides, class warfare and the general vitriol that defines our society. Our collective memory sucks.
Likewise, after the financial meltdown, there was a collective belt-tightening that took place. But I don't even think it took six months for Americans to get tired of living with the sacrifices required to climb out of our mess. Agreed, the government could stand to tighten their belts a bit too, but personal responsibility is just that: personal.
We see people suffering around us, and we wish that there is something that we could do for them. But we bemoan our own circumstances as the reason we can't do more.
Are the circumstances self-inflicted? Are we still trying to push our lifestyles over the line of what we can truly afford?
It is my firm belief that if we take a step back and examine all the places our money is going, we might find that there are some financial hemorrhages that could be quickly cauterized to free up resources that would allow us to give more generously.
Jesse S. Greever is the CEO of 3G Publishing, a digital publisher for Christian authors. If you are a Christian author and have a manuscript that you think is worthy of publication, check out the submission guidelines and follow the directions for manuscript submissions. Greever is also a co-author of the book, Learning to Give in a Getting World, and numerous fiction titles from Untreed Reads publishing.
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Learning to Give in a Getting World, by Marc Farnell and Jesse Greever, is available as both a paperback and eBook at the following locations:
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It
is also available to Amazon Prime members as a free eBook download as a
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can contact me directly at jesse@accidental-author.com to find out about discounts available for churches that wish to use this for teaching and small group curriculum.
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