Following media coverage on specific themes can be quite frustrating, not at least because at times the news appear to be either controlled, blatantly subjective, subtly manipulative, poorly researched, or following the zeitgeist, or any mix of those, no matter how well they are put on paper or presented in person. For most of my life I couldn’t care less as I swallowed anything and everything as given truth. Yet, growing older I find myself increasingly contemplating given information and asking, “Where’s the truth in this?”, when reading the daily or magazines, or listening to news on radio or TV.

When Pilate was confronted with passing judgement on Jesus all he could rely on were the unrecorded accusations and testimonies of the Jews, the little Jesus spoke Himself and his own inner voice, conscience and logic sense. Jesus claimed, “All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true” to which Pilate responded, “What is truth?” (John 18:37-38, NLT-SE) Knowing that, against his own convictions, Pilate handed Jesus (according to John 14:6 the truth personified) over to be tortured and crucified, his question could well be interpreted as a cynical or snide remark in the sense of, “What do you know?”, with an emphasis on you.

Back to today. For the past three years, for example, we had various degrees of news coverage on the financial and economic crisis, ranging from a doomsday mood to a it-will-pass-quickly-and-we-will-sort-it-out attitude. Where is the truth? In recent weeks there has been a push for dishing out positive news on economic developments. Things will be fine soon, so relax, don’t worry too much and enjoy the ride. Mind you, a large renowned daily even accused those warning of major problems still unsolved as diehard doomsday prophets spoiling the recovery party.

So where lies the truth? The world is left with many more trillions in public debt alone in attempts to stem the crisis. Yet the crisis is still there, in fact even bigger if we put numbers to it. Putting the world wide debt of all three sectors (public, corporate, private) based on figures available at $180 trillion by the end of 2010 is not far fetched from the mathematical truth. Thats more than three times the current world’s annual GDP! To add insult to injury the yearly interest payments (= income without work for those who receive it) alone amount to probably one-third of the world’s annual GDP! Consider this, it all needs to be paid and worked for by those who still have work and receive a pay. So from a biblical point of view there is lots to worry about, certainly when you do the simple math that reveal that the multitude of hard-working world citizens work for a small minority of the rich.

When people are saying, “All is well and secure”, and, “There is peace and safety”, then in a moment unforeseen destruction (ruin and death) will come upon them as suddenly as labor pains come upon a woman with child; and they shall by no means escape, for there will be no escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:3, Amplified Bible)

Just because things sort of worked in the past doesn’t mean they will continue to do so. Perhaps it was only God’s grace that kept things in check for a long time?

The truth is that our debt and interest based financial system will never ever adds up, never ever brings justice, but ultimately always lead to grave problems. Its a given that this system, which not only ignores but directly works against a host of God’s principles and truths, will destroy, no matter how we gloss things over.

Truth is that God’s idea of economics looks vastly different from ours today. We can ignore it. We can deny it. We can shut our eyes to it and act and revolt against it. But in the end the truth will prevail. Ask Pilate.

Gottfried Hetzer

04 August 2010