Letter from America

Whoever is at fault, and wherever the blame lies, the last few weeks in America have shaken many people’s confidence in the financial system.

You probably know the news as well as I do. What’s really important from an evangelical Christian point of view is the opportunity this crisis has created. We are being called to examine where our hopes lie and witness to a confidence not ultimately in the market but in our God and his Word.

The Puritans had a whole species of sermons reserved for the aftermath of crises. Bad winter, bad storm, defeat in war — and scholars have identified a characteristic response from some Puritans called a ‘Jeremiad’. That is, they asked God’s people to repent. Often the hope was that such difficulties would lead to a softening of the heart of the unconverted and a turning to God in masses. The same pattern has been true more recently. After 9/11, the hope was that many people would turn to God and, indeed, reports came in of church worship services being packed with people seeking help and hope.

Opportunity

A difficulty is truly an opportunity. It challenges our world and so may redirect our worldview. But an opportunity that is not seized is no more than an open door to a room that is never entered. I think of texts like 1 Peter 2 where Christ is described as ‘the living stone’ and we are called to put our trust in him. This stone is precious to those who trust, but to those who disobey the message, ‘it is a rock that makes them fall’. Christ, at all times and in all events, through his Word, calls us to exercise trust in him that we might find him to be the precious, solid, cornerstone for our lives that he is. And when so much else that passes for solid ground — money, markets and savings — is revealed to be little less than sinking sand, there is a fresh opportunity to test and see that Christ is the one true Rock on which to base our lives.

Aliens and strangers

Who knows when the current economic crisis will end and ‘normality’ return. Such predictions are less significant than the certainty that at some point the normality will once again end and the crisis — whether financial or of another kind — will return. The great truth that these moments of difficulty force upon us is that this life is not reliable. That we have no home here. That we are aliens and strangers in this world. What the crisis does is expose that the security of finances is truly the illusion, and the security of the living stone is the reality. It is an opportunity, then, for us to exercise trust in Jesus.

Counter intuitive

What does that trust in Jesus look like during these times?

It looks like something counterintuitive. It is standing still when everything inside screams run away. Trusting Jesus always seems counterintuitive to some, but especially when in difficulty. To this the cross must be allowed to speak. However frightening our current difficulties, at the cross we see that Jesus speaks the (counterintuitive) message that God loves us, that Christ died for us, that he suffered in our place. We can trust Jesus Christ crucified.

It also looks like something productive. As we trust Jesus we are enabled to be built up spiritually, even if financially we are being torn down. We witness to those around that we march to a different drum. That our hope is indeed eternal and not ephemeral.

Kipling would say that when you can face both success and defeat, then you are a man — ‘if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same’. But if we can have our world rattled and find peace in God through Christ in the midst of the storm, we, like living stones, are coming to him, the Living Stone, and that, in a sense, is what it means to be a Christian when the markets tumble.

When the markets tumble?

Opportunity

Aliens and strangers

Counter intuitive

Josh Moody, Connecticut

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