When America sneezes, the infection quickly spreads through the global financial system. As a result of her recent 'credit crunch', lenders and debt junkies alike worldwide are being crushed by the weight of defaults. Greed has suddenly given way to fear, destroying the market value of major banks that have looked at their reserves and found they have none. Slashed interest rates confront us with the truth that money is not as valuable as we thought.
Writing off - or, if you prefer, forgiving - bad debt is painful, and our global interdependence means we all share the pain. It has become personal for me. No longer is it a distant problem of troubled banks; now it's a friend of mine out of a job. Now it's people I know who can't get a mortgage. My own savings are at risk and shrinking in value.
A fund manager said that the Western financial system needed 'a clean-out of Augean-stable proportions' but added that 'we have no Hercules.'
If only the current crisis were all a legend that a suitably legendary hero could put to right. The problem is that the crisis and the pain it brings are real. And so it's a real hero we need.
That's where God comes in. The greed, deception, fear, denial, guilt and collapse of trust that lie at the heart of the current credit crunch are symptomatic of the crisis at the heart of humankind. This is an all too public and corporate demonstration of a normally private and personal reality. It was to deal with this reality - the reality of sin - that Jesus went to Calvary.
In stark contrast to our desperate attempts to escape liability, on the first Good Friday he willingly embraced the cross, experiencing all the terror and pain of the cosmic 'crunch point'. There, the global bad debt of sin was paid, with the only currency that never devalues:
For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. (1 Peter 1:19)
That's where God comes in. The greed, deception, fear, denial, guilt and collapse of trust that lie at the heart of the current credit crunch are symptomatic of the crisis at the heart of humankind. This is an all too public and corporate demonstration of a normally private and personal reality. It was to deal with this reality - the reality of sin - that Jesus went to Calvary.
In stark contrast to our desperate attempts to escape liability, on the first Good Friday he willingly embraced the cross, experiencing all the terror and pain of the cosmic 'crunch point'. There, the global bad debt of sin was paid, with the only currency that never devalues:
For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. (1 Peter 1:19)
Have a blessed Easter!
PS. Don't miss 'ThePassion' ..http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thepassion/
Thanks to Paul Valler (LICC)
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