“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread and Forgive Us Our Debts...” A Parable of the Scorpion & the Frog

The scorpion asked the frog for a ride across the stream.

The frog declined, saying the scorpion would sting him and they would both drown.

The scorpion convinced the frog it wouldn’t happen, but midway across, zap, he stung the frog.
As they were both going down, the frog asked, Why did you do it?

“I couldn’t help it—it’s just my nature!”

In the 1950′s, television spread a gospel of consumerism around the world as everyone could see what Americans had. I spent the summer of 1960 in Colombia and Venezuela, and everyone I met wanted to come to America.

Well—they made it—either coming here, or buying like Americans there. By 1994, the developing countries as a whole owed an estimated US$ 1 800 000 million according to World Bank figures. [The figures are deceptive; it is indeed, $1,800,000,000,000.] Many developing countries are so indebted that their total annual repayments outstrip foreign exchange earnings up to 30 times over.

David Beckmann, a Lutheran minister and Executive Director of Bread for the World said, “We could use some supernatural help, don’t you think?”

But God’s miracles are often focused on the heart rather than the stomach. He satisfies our needs by helping us to be content with what we have.

We can’t take it with us when we go, so instead of spending our children’s inheritance, we should deal with our unconscionable debt that even their grandchildren can never pay, or they could die in the war…

. “It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.” – Thomas Jefferson,

“The government under which Jesus lived was corrupt and oppressive. On every hand were crying abuses—extortion, intolerance, and grinding cruelty. Yet the Saviour attempted no civil reforms, attacked no national abuses, nor condemned the national enemies. He did not interfere with the authority of those in power. He who was our example kept aloof from earthly governments; not because He was indifferent to the woes of men, but because the remedy did not lie in merely human and external measures. The cure must regenerate the heart.” The Desire of Ages, pg 509.

Coveting our neighbors goods is the basis for television ads to sell us something we don’t have. Without it, the great American dream would turn into a nightmare. But it is anyway! Wanting a new TV or car on credit, multiplied a few billion times is where the world is at.

In our parable, we have become the scorpion, stinging our children with a debt as we try to cross the strream together—it’s just our nature to want more, and the government is that way too. They are stinging us with a debt when they can’t refrain from more and more spending, and we are about mid-stream or mid-term, watch out for the sting! Some of us are already feeling it in the meaninglessness of our culture…

In an ebook published in anticipation of economic collapse last fall, October 7 was the new moon anniversary of October 1, 2008 when the US Senate approved the $760 billion bailout when the stock market crashed for 10 days. In Bible times it was the Feast of Trumpets that blew for 10 days till the Day of Atonement, Leviticus 23:24-28.

And while nothing huge happened as projected last fall, the government was officially shut down on October 7, given it “sign quality” for what could happen this fall. The Feast of Trumpets is when we might expect the 1^st trumpet of Revelation 8 to sound and “all green grass is burnt up.”

This is about the economy, because “as the flower of the grass, so shall the rich man fade,” James 1:9-11, King James. For more information, readers may find the ebook of interest at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ET80D6K