So Now What?

My children asked me the question a month or so ago, "what if Obama wins?"  I told them that nothing would change.  The next day we would all get up and have a cup of coffee.  People would go to their jobs like always and you guys would have school.

But then one day you'll drive by a shopping center, and you'll say to yourself, "I remember when we used to go shopping there.  Now it's boarded up."  One day you'll happen to notice we haven't eaten out in a long time.  It might occur to you one day that our neighborhood just seems much more blighted and the houses more in disrepair; and that there's graffiti much more common as the people stop bothering to cover it up.

I told them that our economy may collapse under the weight of debt anyway, but that if the current direction were stayed, it's collapse would be much more certain and sooner.  You will first see things start to cost a lot more as the government prints money in order to keep itself empowered.  But eventually the money will no longer buy sufficient food and that will be when things get really bad.  Violence will fill our streets and martial law will have to be declared so that people can work and survive. People will die.  America will probably go on.  But it won't be the America that was.  It will be a new America, an America hostile to those of us who remember and long for the old one.

So what has happened?  We have been drifting for years.  The sixties marked a stark turning point as every boundary was tested.  They crumbled.  Four years ago we entered the culmination of the sixties era upheaval.  Yesterday that reality was affirmed by a majority of Americans, most of which see the historic economic cycles of late as a trustworthy indication of what we can expect in the future.  The economy will recover, they think, simply because it always has.  Those people are blind to the root nature of our predicament. While no economy is so far gone that it can't recover in a moral society, no economy is so robust that it can survive an immoral society.  It's simple really.  No society can sustain the damage to the family and foundations that this society has, and then have things continue as if none of it mattered.

So, now what?  First I personally plan on cleaning house.  There has been a nagging in my heart that I've been placing way to much of my focus on the wrong things.  I plan on spending some time evaluating those things in light of their interference with my worship and adoration of Jesus.  I am confident that I have let idols creep in.  They must go, and I must seek the face of my God.

Second, I plan on beginning work on my heart as it pertains to enduring suffering and watching my family endure it.  I so want to walk through this time in a way that honors God.  That will take some work.  We Americans have never had to deal with these sorts of things before.  I feel fairly certain we will be doing so in the coming years.

Third, I will make some effort to be ready for anarchy.  I'm not talking about hoarding a years worth of food and bullets here.  But I am talking about being able to feed my family, and my neighbors if they need it, for a time.  I will also create a plan so that if we need to leave quickly, perhaps we will be able to.  I'm fairly certain that we have at least a year, probably two, and if we're very very fortunate, never, before our society unravels to the point I envision.

The question I keep asking myself though is this one, can a society do what we are now, and have been doing, and simply expect things go well?  Do we have an indefinite number of administrations that we can elect until someone comes along that can make things normal again?  My answer is always the same.  No, I'm afraid not.