In The Family Way

Kenny says he can make flying boots. They'll be great. You just strap them on, and up you go, zipping off to wherever you need to be. No traffic, no delays, no hassles. Just perfectly safe, perfectly efficient, solar-powered flying boots.

A bunch of his brothers and sisters and cousins like his idea, and they join a bunch of their friends -- even ones who live far, far away -- to give him a bazillion dollars to make the boots. The contracts are all drawn up, they wink and smile at one another about all the ways they're really working within the true intent of the law, and they all go clubbing together to toast how wonderful this will all be.

Dad is suspicious, however, but Dad likes Kenny too much to say anything. In fact he works hard to turn those suspicions into his advantage. Should Kenny and everyone fail to do so well in this effort, he gets them to believe that he'll rescue them. That way no one will abandon Dad and his splendid intentions.

The neighbors really like Kenny, too, and have been eager to make Kenny and everyone feel welcome, even though they have really struggled to make it in the past. They make sure that all the neighborhood association rules drawn up apply to them as well, just so they can have all the benefits of all the hard work the neighbors do to make the neighborhood particularly nice.

Then there's rich Uncle Ichabod, who is kind of the patriarch of Kenny's family. He's really more rich than powerful, someone who likes to look like he's boss, say a lot of fancy things to look smart, but he really just likes being nice to all the scarier people who really do crack heads with their power.

Alas, Kenny can't make the flying boots. After building huge expensive research facilities and manufacturing plants, and paying thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people lots and lots and lots and lots of money to try really really really really hard to make flying boots, he just can't do it. Much of that is because he and all those people just have to spend much of their time kickin' it in their beachside villas, avoiding all the pesky trouble of getting trained and educated properly and actually getting out there and producing flying boots, or anything for that matter.

Now, if this story sounds familiar, it is just a parable that is Greece. Lots of pundits like to use the family to show how larger global financial affairs work, and while some may actually do a much better job of it than this, I humbly think this is a reasonably decent take.

I will also humbly confess that I got the idea for the actors from top Pimco exec Mohamed El-Erian's piece about the four players in the Greek debt crisis. "Who's to blame?" he asks. The private investors, the Greek government, the European union, and the International Monetary Fund are the culprits.

If you didn't catch it, Kenny's relatives are the first, Dad is the second, the neighbors are the third, and the Uncle Ichabod is the fourth. The thing is, El-Erian forgot one important character that I included. The most important one of all.

Kenny.

Kenny represents not only the Greek people, but an entire Catholicized population who still believe they can spin gold from straw. They are all codependently intertwined, selfishly and fearfully motivated, slogging around in a wicked and reprobate world full of people with great big smiles on their faces.

I'm not sure if El-Erian just presumed Kenny, or maybe he didn't mention him because he too is just part of the World System of Extravagant Enablement -- that Kenny is really not to blame in all of this and that good wholesome loan-facilitating people just like El-Erian are there to help.

No one ever seems to know how to introduce that one other actor who can truly free them from their enslavement, the very sin that festers in their souls. That liberator is Jesus Christ, and He's nowhere in the picture. Oh a straw-man Jesus will show up once in a while, but he's completely impotent, thoroughly ineffective except to hold up as some inspirational icon to get a little bit of work done.

But because there is so much lying going on with everyone holding Jesus masks in front of their faces, the Greek crisis may indeed lead to some seriously destructive economic condition which everyone is going crazy trying to predict. It is the standard, habitual, instituionalized deceit that runs through it that makes all this "The sky is falling!" stuff so ridiculous. The sky is falling because they are all pulling it down on top of themselves.

It'd be nice if there were many more followers of Christ who really knew about the striking contrast between the World and the Kingdom who could share their Lord with Kenny, people who could truly and insightfully understand and, hey, explain to others what's really going on with these major financial matters in order to get them to turn to Him. Sadly there are so few.

It's why I write. Hoping that maybe some will see what's happening and know about it, pray about it, go love others out of it, tell others about Christ and His astounding freedom...

My webzine is here. Would love for you to read it. No expectations, no worries, I'm not on the hook for all this. It's just there. It's just happening.

Maybe you'll find Him there, that's all this is about.

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