A Sunday Sermon

The Gospel this morning focused on debt, sin and forgiveness in the form of a wicked servant who owed his king the vast sum of 10,000 Talents and was forgiven, only to throw a man into gaol (debtors' prison) who owed him a far smaller sum. The king was justly furious and threw the wretch to the jailers till he should "pay the last penny." This, of course, he could never do.

We get the point of the story on a purely human level, the behavior of the servant "just ain't right." In spiritual terms? How can we,  who owe such a weighty debt of sin to God and have been shown such merciful love by Him, turn 'round in vindictive, merciless fury on people who owe us so much less in comparison.

You don't need to be a world class ethicist to work it out, it just ain't right. And Christ warns us, unless you forgive your neighbor from your heart you'll be thrown into the prison of Hell. That sounds harsh but divine math is clear; a person who harbors merciless, vindictive wrath against another person has no place in paradise. Love and hatred cannot coexist.

So forgive, 70 x 7 or go to Hell. Does that mean we have to like or condone the behavior of people who grievously offend us? By no means, their actions may well be unconscionable and I do not say that lightly. But even so, banish hatred and merciless anger from your heart, it is toxic, poisonous, and utterly incompatible with God and heaven. So hard to do! Especially if we've been on the receiving end of evil, but do it we must. I find this helps, you may too. 

Start with God, reflect or meditate on his person, on his perfection, and on Christ, his character, teaching and, above all, what he has done for us, how he has given his life on the cross that we, utterly unworthy, might be forgiven.

Stand in humility before God, in the humility from which contrition and mercy flow, which in their turn drive out pride, hatred, malice, hardheartedness and a vindictive spirit, all the non-qualities abhorrent to God. Then offer the person or persons who have offended you to Christ, praying that his good will may be done in them. 

Well done, you've made an act of love for the person who's sinned against you and in the process opened yourself up to be a channel of his love in the world.

Having done that, pray fervently that Christ will grant you a forgiving heart. He will hear that prayer, made sincerely, and with it we will be forgiven as we forgive those who trespass against us, and find the gates of heaven opened. Yes, even to us who are not worthy ut intres sub tectum meum .

Here endeth the Lesson,

LSP

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Postscript, via Kobiessi Letter:

The U.S. Now Has:

1. Record $17.1 trillion in household debt

2. Record $12.0 trillion in mortgages

3. Record $1.6 trillion in auto loans

4. Record $1.6 trillion in student loans

5. Record $1.0 trillion in credit card debt

The average house payment is about to hit $3,000/month for the first time in history.

All as oil prices are up ~40% in 3 months, mortgage rates hit 7.5% and credit card rates are at a record 25%.

Borrowing more debt is not the solution to high inflation.

This is unsustainable.

Who will forgive this debt? God?  The bankers who issued it at interest? But who cares, maybe it'll all magically disappear and everything will be trans unicorn bathrooms and rainbows forever as we live into our stunningly brave new secular utopia where the debtor will never be punished by their bankster gaolers. Sure, go right ahead and believe that, and good luck to you.

Who 's Gonna Pay The Troops?

 

Rightist jaws are crashing in consternation with each new Executive Order. How many so far, 44? More, at least, in a couple of weeks than in the whole of 45's presidency. My God, what is this, a fiat government tyranny! Well yes, it is, protected by a few thousand National Guardspersons of dubious loyalty.

Regardless, no one's talking about this, and perhaps they should. The US debt is what, 27 trillion and counting? What does this mean? That $USD, which is a debt instrument at interest to the privately owned Fed Reserve, is essentially worthless? Something like that.

Now, do the math. All you political philosopher economists (PPE) crunch the numbers. Figure out the end game. When our hollowed out, rotten, fake money implodes, which it inevitably will, who's gonna pay the soldiers? 

But let's hope we don't go there. Who knows, maybe magicke will heal the US Dollar and all will be well. Don't count on it. Smart people are buying $DOGE at the dip and loading magazines.

Your Pal,

LSP

Hypersonic Debt

Now that Dallas has removed its infamous statue of General Lee, we can safely assume that everyone's going to be better off and a brave new world of tolerance, diversity and equal opportunity can begin now that institutional racism is finally erased from our parks. But not so fast, readers.

In your excitement over statues you may not have noticed that we're $20 trillion in debt and climbing at a rate of around $1.1 trillion a year. That's something like $34,880 a second or if you picture it in terms of the speed of sound, which is 1,125 feet per second, our debt is flying at over Mach 30. Eat your heart out, Chuck Yeager.

This means that the US is hurtling towards bankruptcy at hypersonic speed and looking somewhere down the pike at a Grecian-style sovereign debt crisis. So how do you resolve a >104% debt to GDP ratio, with a $19 trillion economy and a $20 trillion debt overhang?

Through tax cuts and economic boosting? Good call but not enough. You solve the problem by devaluing the dollar, by inflation.

Jim Rickards, at Zerohedge, suggests this can be done by the Treasury inflating the price of gold, from around $1,330 an ounce to $5,000 through the use of a Gold Certificate issued to the Fed. It's been done before, in 1934 and 1953, under the Roosevelt and Eisenhower administrations respectively. And sure enough, inflation ensued.

Problem? Solution, except that your dollars will be sadly worthless. Of course there's another option which perhaps goes hand in hand with the first, war.

You can read all about the debt here and here. Or obsess about statues in parks, your call.

Midas Touch,

LSP