Cerulean Sanctum

The Just Shall Live by Faith

2008-10-06T00:33:30Z

Saturday a bit more than a week ago, I was out driving on the highway near my home when the Lord spoke this to my spirit:

The just shall live by faith.

It’s a sure word, so sure in fact that it’s said four times in the Scriptures: Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38. I believe God would have us remember this point!

The just are those who have placed their faith in Christ and have been made right with God. I think the phrase is less a command and more a statement of fact. People who have been given the power to become the children of God are the ones who live by faith.

Some believe that the financial meltdown now afflicting our country is the start of a great tribulation. I don’t know; it may be.

What I do know is this: The just shall live by faith.

The one who trusts money will see that money fail.

The one who trusts in cunning will see that cunning fail.

The one who trusts in elaborate disaster plans will see those plans fail.

The one who trusts in friends will see those friends fail.

The one who trusts in the ability to control life will see that control fail.

The one who trusts in self will see self fail.

Who will survive when all the foundations are rocked? The one who trusts God and God alone for all provision, all wisdom, and all security.

The just shall live by faith.

The world will scream at genuine Christians, claiming they are fools. The worldly will say, “Look, you have lost everything.” And we will respond, “We have Christ, therefore we have all that matters.”

Many Christians will be overtaken by fear in the days ahead. They will fear because their confidence is in their own resources, not in the Lord. The one who knows Christ cannot be shaken.

The idols we have made of our jobs, our homes, our material goods, and our investments have been assaulted. If we do not recognize this time of shaking for what it is, we will not be found ready.

But the just, who live by faith, will find a most unusual word spoken to them: “Peace.” I can hear God speaking it even now. “Peace.”

The world cannot hear that word, nor will they accept it. Their rejection comes because they are not just and they have no faith except in what moth and rust destroy.

God will raise up those Christians who are at rest. Some may even have felt an otherwordly peace descend upon their hearts in recent days. I think those will be the people who will be able to stand as lighthouses for Christ in the midst of the storm.

Though the world around us may go to pieces, God will preserve those who trust Him no matter what is going on outside the four walls of the local church.

The just shall live by faith.

The Just Shall Live by Faith

Tags: Confidence, Economics, Economy, Faith, Financial Crisis, Financial Meltdown, Hope, Peace, Rest, Trust

Flunked Econ 101? Read This…

2008-10-04T06:09:29Z

Okay, so my recent attempt at explaining retail economics has been riddled full of holes by would-be Warren Buffetts. To get someone more knowledgable to explain to me why my reasoning was off, I emailed a friend of mine, Tom, who is an attorney. He provided what must be considered the Unified Field Theory of Economics as he not only discussed how credit works in the business world but also included an explanation of the current Wall Street meltdown. So in a way, I tie in two of my previous posts (”The Truth About Christian Bookstores” and “Jefty Economics and the Least of These“).

What follows is a fascinating overview. (As to some of the political commentary in the response below, it’s integral to the piece. Cerulean Sanctum toes no party line and never will, so I offer the following with that caveat.)

The world runs on credit. Merchants don’t purchase their inventory, they borrow it for sale. In some cases they use a business credit line from a conventional bank to get the money to buy inventory for sale. Certainly, a very small business has to do that because they can’t get credit from suppliers. The smallest businesses use credit card financing—they buy with a credit card and use proceeds to pay the credit card bill. If you pay the balance at the end of each month you never have interest charge—and you get 30-60 days of money for free.

In more established businesses, the manufacturer supplies inventory on a net-30 or net-60 term which means in essence that the manufacturer is loaning the inventory. Auto dealers work through a financing arm of their manufacturer to get inventory on the shelves without paying for it, or at least paying very low interest on its value.

Wal-Mart’s model is to pay quickly but sell more quickly. They typically get cash terms from suppliers, i.e., no finance charge, pay 30-60 days after delivery. But they sell merchandise before the payment for that merchandise is due to the manufacturer. Wal-Mart will roll prices down to cost, just to make sure that they get the inventory sold before it is paid for. If you make this scheme large enough you have billions of merchandise sold and later paid for , and millions if not billions of dollars continuously in Wal-Mart’s pocket. Money earned from sales and not yet paid to suppliers, money that is constantly flowing in and out but which has a steady positive value—which Wal-Mart is free to invest in stores or put in the money markets to make interest. Without even profiting on the product sales (!), Wal-Mart can make money on “float”. It is brilliant.

If you contemplate this, you can see why the big box, Wal-Mart style stores rule retail. They can survive on very tight margins because they can roll inventory through their store that they never effectively pay for. Consumers love the selection and the store has a volume of transactions that can generate a sufficient profit even as the actual margin per transaction is very low. The old mom and pop store that actually owns its inventory is dead and will never come back (outside of highly niched businesses).

This explanation says a lot for why a credit crunch is extremely hazardous to our economic system. Our economy uses credit so systematically and it is so much at the core of our economic effectiveness, that to constrain it just the littlest bit sends shock waves throughout the whole system. The businesses that are right on the edge—the ones that need to borrow money even for a day or two to cover the cost of inventory and make payments to manufacturers before inventory is sold—are in a very precarious position. If they can’t get credit they’ll get caught between paying for inventory and paying for payroll, for example. That’s a tough spot…if you don’t pay for the inventory on time you get no more and you’re out of business. If you don’t pay the employees, they all quit and/or the news gets out and your suppliers dry up. Any way, you’re out of business.

Banks make short term loans mainly in the form of business lines of credit. The banks use their own money for such loans, or borrow money in short term credit markets. Banks make margin on the interest rate difference. (Obviously, a bank can borrow short term money at a lower rate than a business can borrow short term money.)

It is not just the odd business that runs on short term credit—essentially all of them do. And not just retail. Manufacturers operate on credit. Obviously, they want to get paid for what they make, but they don’t get paid as fast as they like (thanks to Wal-Mart and its friends). Manufacturers have costs to cover and need money to keep the plant rolling.

Businesses around the world thus play in the short term credit market, some directly, most indirectly. They give IOU’s to cover their costs while they wait for receivables to come in, and they pay back as they can. Most businesses do this through a bank but some large companies play in the markets directly.

Bank and large company IOUs are the cash of the macro economy. They are where mutual funds put their money, and where banks park every dime of excess cash that they have, to make sure they make money on their money, rather than have it sit around. (Banks have a minimum of cash on hand they have to maintain - every dime above that minimum is parked somewhere it can make money, and this is done on a daily basis.)

When the short term credit market dries up and short term lenders like banks and mutual funds don’t want your company’s short term IOU’s, you’re dead. Again—missed payrolls, crisis selloffs, etc. GE is a perfect example of a company that couldn’t get enough cash and wound up having to mortgage itself to Warren Buffet. The auto makers are moving toward the same spot and that is why everyone is now saying they’ll get a government loan too. There are many small business examples.

The recent meltdown is so problematic because it has impacted every one of these short term credit markets. I’ll explain how…

The start of the problem was Fannie and Freddie. They were Government-sponsored home loan clearinghouses that wrote low-income mortgage guarantees. They collapsed due to too many claims against mortgage loan guarantees they wrote. This happened primarily because Fannie and Freddie were undercapitalized and underregulated (not subject, for example, to the reforms put in place after the Enron failure). They were never properly regulated because they were an insider institution—Government created, Government coddled. They were also a PC institution— affordable “subprime” loans for the underqualified was a sacred cow of the Democrats. Not surprisingly, Fannie and Freddie were in the pocket of the Democrats and vice versa, and Fannie and Freddie became havens for Democrat politicos. Fannie and Freddie dumped fortunes of cash into the Democrats to get protection—and poured some into the Republicans as well, to get cover. And Fannie and Freddie also dumped fortunes of cash into the pockets of their own executives, who arranged their compensation to be linked directly to the number of loans underwritten, rather than, for example, profitability or safety and soundness. The Democrats blocked every kind of real reform for years, and that is why that condition continued as long as it did.

Of course, an underregulated, politically connected institution with a penchant for guaranteeing risky loans is easy prey for Wall Street. Investment banks took advantage, which is what they live to do. In fact, investment bankers came to DC and completely took over Fannie and Freddie. Together, Fannie/Freddie and Wall Street sharks revolutionized subprime mortgage financing. The key tool was converting subprime mortgages into a different kind of instrument entirely—mortgage pools held together by elaborate “swap” contracts that dynamically grouped the loans into tiers. The top tier loans were whichever ones are being paid on or paid off, and the bottom tiers were whichever ones are not paid on or paid off. Obviously, the higher tiers have the lowest risk and bottom tiers have the highest risk. The mortgage pool pays the owners of the top tier securities the lowest interest rates return and pays the bottom tier security holders the highest interest rate return.

The subprime-mortgage-backed derivative securities were guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie, because the mortgages themselves were so guaranteed. Wall Street also arranged for the top tier securities to be reinsured by commercial insurers such as AIG. Those top tiers now looked really safe—they looked at lot like the short term paper Banks deal in fluidly. When you consider that any pool of subprime loans will include plenty of “house flippers” and refinancers, you’ll see that buyers of top tier securities would, at least until recently, be quite sure to get their money back very soon after putting it in. Only bottom tier people bore a risk of waiting for money to come back like a conventional mortgage lender. Of course, you can see the assumptions there—houses will hold value, people will continue to be able to flip real estate and refinance, etc.

The bottom tier securities mostly went to investment banks and investors ready to take a risk. Things turned out badly for those people, hence Lehman Brothers is no more…but that is not the big problem.

The big problem is that top tier mortgage backed securities entered the market for short term paper, previously occupied only by very safe borrowers such as banks and manufacturers, and very safe lenders such as money market mutual funds. Indeed, I understand that top tier mortgage backed securities were traded as freely as short term paper until the bottom fell out. If you want to lend some money, you can lend it to a bank, or a money market mutual fund, and now you had a third option: buy some mortgage-backed top-tier securities. If you need some cash, you borrow from a bank, or a money-market mutual fund, or you sell some of your mortgage-backed top-tier securities. Basically, mortgage-backed top-tier securities traded just like cash in the world markets.

Of course, the world market for cash demands certainty. Banks will only give short term IOUs to people they are absolutely sure will pay them back. Otherwise, since the bank has put every extra penny into the money market, if it does not get paid back the bank immediately falls below its reserve requirements. It will then get regulatory warnings, the balance sheet will show losses, and the stock will plummet. If it gets bad enough depositors get spooked and start to pull assets, making the bank more unsound, and the death spiral is unleashed.

Banks and other investors across the country put short term cash into mortgage-backed securities, and a lot of it. The SEC and various state bank regulators should have blocked this or at least limited it, but they didn’t. I hope the cause of their failure was naivete or stupidity, rather than corruption. We’ll find out.

The bomb went off with the housing bust. Borrowers stopped flipping homes and refinancing, and instead started going bankrupt and into foreclosure. Fannie and Freddie started taking hits on their loan guarantees. Fannie/Freddie were undercapitalized and had been so for years. When they dried out, which didn’t take too long, Fannie and Freddie died, and so did their loan guarantees to backed up subprime mortgage debts, and the securitized versions of them. The holders of lower tier subprime-based securities saw them become nearly worthless. Lehman Brothers died.

It was only days for the rest of the dominos to fall. Only those in the top tier, who were reinsured, remained. But they didn’t last long, because the constriction of financing for home buying deepened the housing slump, and possible claims over top tier securities against AIG and other commercial insurers severely crippled the balance sheet of AIG due to its massive reinsurance exposure. AIG bankrupted, and was immediately loaned huge amounts of cash by the US Government, before we even heard the news. You can see why. AIG was the last guardian of a massive short term credit pool built on mortgage-backed securities.

Now controlled by the US Government, AIG will sell off all of its profitable businesses to cover its reinsurance obligations. Its shareholders, massively diluted by the obligations to the US Government, will be waiting for years for the next dividend, if one ever comes.

AIG was rescued, but the damage was done. Nobody knows if AIG really has enough money to pay off its reinsurance obligations, and in fact, nobody will know for a very long time. The US Government has not said it will guarantee AIG’s reinsurance of mortgage-backed securities, it has only injected cash, become the preferred stockholder, and replaced management. Confidence is lost. Nobody will trade in mortgage-backed securities any more, even the top tier ones. What was being treated as cash is now being treated as worthless. So, the whole system is undermined. The banks that hold the top tier securities, which they bought to park cash, are now stuck with something else entirely: not cash at all, but a long term security for which there is no buyer.

Think about it—nobody knows to what extent these assets are going to pay back. Nobody really analyzed what they were buying and selling in the top tiers before, because they relied on guarantees. That situation is antithetical to short term paper which is supposed to be safe. Short term paper should be only those obligations that are so safe you don’t have to think about whether they’ll get paid back. Top tier mortgage-backed subprime securities are probably OK investments, but clearly, they are not cash.

Banks are obliged by recent reforms to “mark to market”, meaning they must reflect current market price for everything on their balance sheet. When the market for short term mortgage-back securities froze, those rules required the banks to treat those securities as worthless, and write off a huge portion of what had been cash reserve. Suddenly banks across the country were at risk of being unsound for having too little cash. Some were particularly bad —Washington Mutual, Wachovia, etc.—those that were major players in subprime lending.

When these mainstream banks found out those banks were unsound, the collapse accelerated— uninsured depositors at those institutions, such as small businesses with more than $100k on deposit, retirees with their nest eggs in COD’s, etc.—heard about the precarious financial condition of those banks and pulled out. The rest of the cash drained, and the banks failed.

Also, you may have read about a money market mutual fund that failed—it was heavily into mortgage-backed securities. Massive cash withdrawals from that fund forced it to drop below a $1 share price. They were bailed out using a depression-era fund established for just that purpose.

So, a huge amount of short term money was sucked out of the world economy by the failure of mortgage-backed securities. Then the effect spread through failures at very large banks and money market mutual funds. Confidence was lost in each of the three traditional places to park cash: banks, mutual funds and short term securities. Much of the lubricant of the economy spontaneously turned to jell-o.

Treasury moved fast, making money available on short term, propping up AIG, ensuring no depositors lost money, propping up failed money market funds. But there is still the original toxin—mortgage-backed investments that should be cash but are now recognized to be long term, risk-bearing investments. They have to work out of the system, get treated as long-term risky obligations that they are, and get replaced with enough cash to keep things running. This would happen over time, and the market would punish those institutions that bought too much of those investments. But that could be very painful and perhaps not survivable by an economy like ours.

Hence the current answer: the Government buys up to 700 Billion dollars of top-tier, subprime-mortgage-backed securities from the market, replacing them with cash. How much they are worth is unknown—but they are worth something because the homes that secure them are worth something. Maybe 30 cents on the dollar is a fair price … who knows? Any price is better for the system than where we are now, which is them being treated as worthless.

The only entity in the world that can buy these securities out of the market and replace them with solid hard cash is the United States Government, the world’s last and only Warren Buffet. If this does not happen, we’re going down the rabbit hole with no clear idea where it leads.

I find this all morbidly fascinating. However, I remain optimistic that through all of this, we will recover. We will suffer a recession about as bad as that from the dot-com crash, and come back stronger. This is a cautionary tale, something I’m sure we’ll learn from in future generations and hopefully will not repeat. Maybe our addiction to credit will finally be quenched for a few generations. One can hope.

A fine, succinct explanation from a guy much smarter than I am. It pays to have informed friends.

Flunked Econ 101? Read This…

Tags: Banking, Banks, Credit, Economics, Economy, Financial Crisis, Financial Meltdown, Leverage, Loans, Markets, Retail, Retail Sales, Sub-Prime Mortgage, Wall Street

The Truth About Christian Bookstores

2008-10-04T06:11:16Z

As someone who worked for two years back in the 80s as an assistant manager/book buyer/Bible buyer/music buyer for two Christian bookstores, I know the behind-the-scenes realities. I know where the closets are that hold the industry skeletons, and I can tell you why things are the way they are.

I wanted to write about this topic a couple months ago when Frank Turk talked about Christian bookstores (at a link I can no longer locate), but Tim Challies’ focus on the issue of Christians buying retail from other Christians (particularly from mom and pop Christian bookstores) made this post essential.

So this post is about a few truths that I know about the business, plus I’ll ask a disturbing question at the end that I’ve been unable to shake.

1. It’s impossible for mom and pop Christian bookstores to make money selling just books, Bibles, and CDs.

The only lamentations that rival Jeremiah’s are those of Christians complaining about the black velvet paintings of Jesus, the WWJD? trinkets, the Precious Moments figurines, the Made-in-China Bible character toys, and all the whatnot that make up the average Christian bookstore.

But here’s a sad reality that most people don’t know: Mom and pop Christian bookstores buy most of their Bibles, books, and music through massive distribution houses that handle all the goods. Or, as we call them, middle men.

In my day, Spring Arbor was the primary Christian goods distributor. Most Christian bookstores, even the large chains, dealt with Spring Arbor on some level. As the buyer of books, music, and CDs at two Christian bookstores (one a mom and pop and one a not-for-profit chain), I dealt with Spring Arbor constantly.

What I learned firsthand is that a book with an MSRP of $10 would almost always cost me $5 to buy. If I sold that book at full retail, I recouped my $5 cost. That left me with $5.

See the problem? My “profit” left me with nothing except the ability to restock that book. No payroll, no building rental costs, no utilities, no nothing.

Which means…

2. Most Christian bookstores must meet their financial obligations by selling high-margin junk.

The WWJD? keychain that sells for $5 but cost the store $1 to purchase is what makes the Christian bookstore world go ’round and ’round.

No trinkets, no Christian bookstore.

Check out the last truth for an even deeper take on this.

3. Economies of scale dictate all those books you hate to see on the shelves.

Sick of seeing Joel Osteen’s grinning face staring back from book covers? Does it seem like every shelf in the bookstore has a book by Max Lucado or Joyce Meyer? Yet you can’t find that translation out of the German of the latest treatise on infralapsarianism?

There’s a reason for that.

When publishers have a mega-author, they can take advantage of a principle that Henry Ford pioneered: When you can make a boatload of something, per unit price drops like a rock.

So because the publisher of the infralapsarian book may only sell a thousand copies worldwide, while Mr. Osteen sells bazillions, economies of scale will tell you that the publisher won’t be offering much margin on it. Therefore, the bookstore is loathe to buy it when they can offer the high-margin Osteen book.

And since no one wants to go out of business, the bookstore rushes for the higher margin item and ignores the treatise you’re dying to read (and think that every Christian worth his salvation must be dying to read as well).

Of course, the very fact that the publisher printed up a bazillion of Osteen also hints that the Christian bookstore will be able to push a lot of Mr. Bright White Teeth’s books anyway. That explains why your local Christian bookstore is mostly stocked with bestsellers. You know, the books you, the discerning reader, wouldn’t touch for fear of having to explain yourself on Judgment Day.

It also explains another strange phenomenon…

4. So what’s up with all those cheap books by dead guys?

Well, let’s hear it for at least one glint of hope in all this. Many outstanding books by deceased authors exist in the public domain. This enables publishers to get around the sticky issue of paying royalties to authors and their estates.

A. W. Tozer is a classic example of this. He signed away all his books except for The Knowledge of the Holy, which, as many keen observers will note, is one of the only books of Tozer’s that’s handled by a secular publishing house. It also explains why that book, as slim as it is, costs a small fortune compared with Tozer’s other output.

And it also explains why Tozer, who has been dead since 1963, seems to have 800 books on the market. Publishers have free reign to repackage his old material any way they wish, so they keep regrouping his writings and calling them “new” books. Such is the case with many long-dead authors whose works are in the public domain. Publishers are free to jigger their output any way they wish and sell the “Frankenstein” book as something new. Publishers can sexy-up the titles, too, so that a book that 75 years ago was titled An Examination of the Tithe and Its Meaning for Our Times can be repackaged as Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters: How to Make Millions by Tithing. These books, while not bestsellers, are incredibly cheap to print, so they make money.

It all makes great business sense.

Still, for the mom and pops, even this won’t help because…

5. The big chain Christian bookstores that we love to hate can buy directly from the manufacturer much of the time. Mom and pop? Almost never.

When you’re a Family Christian Stores or Lifeway, you can negotiate material costs directly with manufacturers. Your buying clout means you get Osteen’s latest for $5 a unit and can sell it at a discount price of $18, while the mom and pops get it at $12 a unit and are forced to sell it at the MSRP of $25.

In short, mom and pop can’t compete on price and go out of business.

And I’m not even looking at the devastation wreaked by the push of Christian publishing houses into Wal-Mart and other spaces. For the mom and pop, fighting Family Christian Stores is hard enough, but when the crew from Bentonville encroach on your turf…well, you better have a different source of income for retirement than your bookstore.

Here’s the wackier outcome: Even the big Christian chains are finding it harder to compete against secular retailers. So they load up on black velvet paintings of Jesus standing at the door and knocking while their floor space dedicated to books and Bibles shrinks even more.

One other trend to note is that more and more churches have their own bookstores that are often run with no pretenses to making money. Sometimes they are even staffed by volunteers. So now churches are turning on mom and pop stores, too.

In short, it’s capitalism at work, pure and simple. Market forces are market forces. Goodbye, mom and pop.

Sure, some small towns still have that ancient Christian bookstore with the faded copy of The Purpose Driven Life at full MSRP sitting in the store window, but not for long. Internet bookstores are putting those folks out of business, too. No amount of Precious Moments figurines is going to stem that tide.

Challies’ post has a number of good comments from people lamenting this loss. Tim asks whether we should be throwing our business to the mom and pops out there.

It’s a tough call. While I agree that Christians should try to give business to other brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t those other brothers and sisters in Christ have to be competitive? I know that, as a businessman myself, my rates have to reflect what the market will bear or else I can’t compete, either. For that reason, I must adapt.

As I was thinking about this issue of the dying Christian bookstore, I had a startling question arise. It may be a foolish question. It’s definitely a dangerous one. No matter the case, I have to offer to you:

If God is sovereign (and we all believe He is), and He is the one who raises up and casts down, what does this say about the reality of the death of the small Christian bookstore?

I don’t like that question, do you? But it’s a question that must be asked nonetheless.

Comments are open and your thoughts are highy welcome.

UPDATE: I am told that my economic reasoning in #1 is as astute as that of a retarded garden slug high on LSD. For a better explanation of how retail credit works (along with a fine explanation of the Wall Street meltdown), check out this post.

The Truth About Christian Bookstores

Tags: Bookstore, Bookstores, Business, Christian Bookstore, Christian Bookstores, Competition, Family Christian Stores, Lifeway, marketing, Mom and Pop, Spring Arbor

Really, It’s Not You, It’s Me

2008-10-01T13:33:58Z

When you’ve been a consistent voice in the blogosphere for a few years, people start to notice you. It means a lot to me that Cerulean Sanctum has been a blessing to others. I get emails from readers that bless me, too, especially those that tell how much the writings here have been a benefit in other people’s lives.

Unfortunately, that same Web presence can spawn its own interpersonal trials and misunderstandings. That brings me to four relational issues I wish to discuss: post link acknowledgments, book reviews, charity mentions, and LinkedIn.

Acknowledging links to posts at Cerulean Sanctum

Early in my blogging life, I made it a mission that I would thank every blogger who linked to one of my posts and mentioned Cerulean Sanctum on their blog. It was important to me that I acknowledge other bloggers who referenced my writings as a way of showing my gratitude and to make the blogosphere a less cold and unfriendly place.

Sadly, as more and more people link to posts here, I have been unable to keep up with this duty. In fact, if I started today and tried to make up for the backlog of just the last month or two, I would spend all day every day for the rest of my life trying to catch up.

So if I don’t post a thankful comment on your blog for your link, it’s not that I’m not grateful; I really am. Economies of scale have just made it an impossible task.

So I say here, Thank you to everyone who links to posts at Cerulean Sanctum.

Book reviews

I am also grateful that anyone would see fit to ask me to review books that they have written. That major publishers write me and ask me to read galleys is not only a shock, but one of those “I’m not worthy” kind of events.

As a professional writer, I am ultrasympathetic to the plight of authors attempting to garner marketing publicity for their books. My heart goes out to you.

However, the day has so many hours. Because I need to make a living, and I am the sole breadwinner for my family, I am willing to review books but only for a fee.

Yes, for the rare book that is dead-on-target to issues I discuss here at Cerulean Sanctum, I am willing to reconsider. But if you have a book on dating for Christian seniors or some other not-discussed-on-this-blog subject, I can only review it for a fee.

I am sure your book is deserving. The problems are on my end: limited time and the need to feed my family. If I am reviewing a stack of books all day long gratis, then I’m falling down in my most important responsibilities.

Charity mentions

Recently, I’ve seen a sharp increase in the number of charities wishing me to acknowledge their organization on Cerulean Sanctum. I did this once and now face a flood of requests. That’s normally how these things go.

To those that folks who have approached me about their charity, I want to say that I pray that God richly blesses you. But I have decided I need to stick with a decision my wife and I made many years ago. We only support those charities that are run by people we know personally, people that we regularly meet face-to-face. In this way, the accountability remains high. It also means that we can dedicate our limited resources to the people who are doing the work in those charities because they are friends and neighbors in “real” life.

This will be perhaps the most contentious issue of the four here.

I like LinkedIn and use it. It is my only genuine social networking outlet on the Web (besides Cerulean Sanctum), and I believe it to be a decent way for me to keep my business presence alive on the Internet.

But LinkedIn is only as valuable as the strength of its relationships. Its primary purpose, as I see it, is to allow others to recommend my work and for me to do the same for them. For that reason, it demands that I know the people well that I accept as connections. I have to have some history with my connections.

Do I accept connections from people I have never met face-to-face? Yes. However, those people have two things going for them:

I know what my connections do for a living and have seen examples of their professional work. In this way, I can recommend them to others.
My connections and I have developed a history outside of blogging. That means carrying on conversations in private emails or phone calls over the course of some time.

Nothing is harder for me to do than decline invitations to link up on LinkedIn. For every person I decline, it’s like a little death.

If you have offered to link up and I’ve not accepted, I want to say this: It is not because I don’t like you or am being a snob. It’s solely for the two reasons above.

It’s not you, it’s me

So, if I appear standoffish, it has nothing to do with you, your book, your charity, or your blog, and everything to do with my own limitations.

I genuinely care about the people who read Cerulean Sanctum. I’ve prayed for many, if not most, of you. Forgive me if I fail you in other regards.

Really, It’s Not You, It’s Me

Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Book Reviews, Charities, Comments, Connections, Friendship, LinkedIn, Posts, Relationships

Christ Alone in All Things, Even Politics

2008-09-29T19:28:20Z

Believe it or not, this isn’t a political post.

Despite what weather satellites may reveal, the United States, if viewed from space, has never more resembled a massive, angry red wound than it does now. And the salt? Try the Iraq war, terrorism, our status in the world, immigration, or the economic meltdown. For those reasons, people are losing their heads, Christians included, though not quite as thoroughly as in the French Revolution.

Given the election year, the mania is worse than ever. Some are billing Election 2008 as either salvation or damnation for America. Oddly, the Church used to have a term for people who thought that way: the lost.

Still, despite the fact that the One who is to serve as our Lord, Guide, and Model had very little to do with politics, many Christians are looking to politics as the answer for the crises we have made for ourselves.

So in one corner is a former POW who didn’t roll on his country when tortured. In the other corner is a man who says he is full of new ideas. One paints himself as a maverick and the other as the candidate of change.

Critics of Sen. Change note that he’s astonishingly light on any notable political output. They claim the extent of his political will includes his “win at all cost” efforts to champion one political issue more than any other: the right of a woman to have a doctor jam an aspirator into her unborn child’s skull and vacuum out his/her brains.

A little stung by that charge that their man, Sen. Change, fights so hard to kill the unborn, critics of Sen. Maverick come back with claims that while Sen. Maverick doesn’t actively crusade for barbaric deaths for babies, he’s allied with people who are even worse: those who don’t really care all that much about what happens to people after they are born.

Those same pro-Change people like to also note that despite the fact that their man earnestly contends for a policy that leads to the certain death of the most vulnerable in our society, he also represents a vague feeling that may lead to a possible better future for some people at some time—maybe.

This has led some born-again Christians to jump onto Sen. Change’s ship.

Here’s what the Bible says:

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days….
—Deuteronomy 30:19-20

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”
—2 Corinthians 6:14-18

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price….
—1 Corinthians 6:19-20a

The side of Christ is life and blessing. The side of antichrist is death and cursing.

The side of Christ is light. The side of antichrist is darkness.

The side of Christ is surrender to Him. The side of antichrist is surrender to self-interest.

To choose the side of self-interest, death, and darkness is to choose the side of the barbaric skull-vacuuming and dismemberment of the very least of these, the most helpless of all in our society. It is to choose the side of antichrist.

As Christians, we must never choose the side of antichrist. For this reason, we must never, under any circumstances, ally ourselves with those who represent antichrist. Our love for Christ compels us.

Can a Christian still be a Christian if he or she holds a mistaken position that supports antichrist? I believe so, as long as that Christian actively seeks to repent of that mistaken position and choose Christ in all circumstances.

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked. We will all answer on Judgment Day. Everything will be revealed. The intentions of every heart will be made known.

Those born-again Christians who think themselves so brave to be endorsing one who supports antichrist positions are really fooling themselves. Theirs is the coward’s way.

And it’s also the coward’s way to vote for the opposing candidate for no other reason than to not vote for his opponent.

The way that honors God in all things, political or not, is to choose Christ’s way at all times.

Jesus Christ said that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. If we are in Him, then He will make a way for us because He is the Way. He will show us truth because He is truth.

How does this play out in reality?

Let’s consider the election. Those who live by their own self-interest will vote for those candidates that will give them what they want. Those who live by the Spirit of God will vote for those candidates that best reflect what God alone wants.

Here’s where that becomes true counterculture: The one who is guided by Christ alone will vote for the people who best honor His Kingdom even if that means they vote for candidates who are not among the major parties. It means they will vote for the one who honors the Kingdom of God even if that person has no chance of winning the election. Even if that means writing-in the name of a godly person who might only garner one vote, that is what the Christian must do. Because the Christian seeks to reflect light, life, and blessing in all things, even if no one else in the world does.

Therein lies bravery. Therein lies the only real choice for the believer.

And so it must be for all decisions Christians make. We honor Christ and no one else. We choose light and life and blessing in ALL things, not just some. We reject outright anything and anyone set in opposition to Christ in anything.

The road to destruction is wide and many take it. Sadly, many people who consider themselves born again will take it in November and in the days ahead.

Christ Alone in All Things, Even Politics

Tags: Antichrist, Christ, Counterculture, Dying to Self, How to Live for Christ, Humility, Politics, Righteousness, Self-Interest, Selfishness, Vote, Voting

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