JCK-at-large SITE

Whenever I hear someone discounting the reality of inflation, I think of my recent visit to Joe’s Variety Shop.  Sweltering hot day, I was on my bike and looking for a popsicle. I hadn’t bought a popsicle for awhile and assumed they cost about a nickel: lime, orange, cherry, grape, lemon, pineapple — all that refreshing, flavoured ice, a frozen trickle for a nickel!

Of course I’ve known for a long time that it’s hard beat the five-cent popsicle on a hot day.  Following a football game or some after-school mayhem like wrestling on the lawns — our Elgin Street School gang used to go straight for popsicles.  They came frozen solid, wrapped in paper with two popsicle sticks.  Part of the ritual was breaking the delectable flavoured ice bars in two before taking off the wrapping.  You banged the popsicle down hard on the corner of a wall or a counter, cracking it in half.  That gave you two treats, each with its own popsicle stick — all for the price of a nickel.  Breaking that down, it was two and a half cents per unit!

Mercy, was I in for a big surprise at Joe’s Variety!  Turns out the price of a popsicle has swelled to 97 cents — which is something like a 2,000 percent increase!  And for that inflated price, you only get half the popsicle!  Wrapped in plastic!  No need to crack your purchase down the middle. My Maynards came with only one stick.  In short, you get half the popsicle for twenty times the price!  If you want to double it up, you will pay forty times more than you did those few years back. Now that is inflation!

But the inflation story only gets worse.  They tell us that our overpriced popsicle is nothing compared to the more menacing inflation that is coming down the road. Thanks to modern monetary theory and the free-spending ways of various governments, purportedly in response to the coronavirus, Stanley Druckenmiller predicts that inflation will be so bad in the U.S., the American dollar could cease to be the predominant global reserve currency.  “I can’t find any period in history where monetary and fiscal policy were this out of step with the economic circumstances,” this chief executive says.  “The biggest single peacetime threat to reserve currency status is economic and financial mismanagement. And with the Federal Reserve having abandoned its longstanding commitment to tightening policy in anticipation of inflation and the President ‘going big’ with fiscal policy, the fear that inflation could undermine the currency is mounting.”

Meanwhile, Statistics Canada reported last week that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 3.7% on a year-over-year basis in July, mostly driven by shelter costs, which saw a 13.8% increase — the largest annual spike since October 1987.  The Star calls it a “skyrocketing cost of living imposed on Canadians through inflation” and wonders when we’ll see government action to “lower prices on food and banking fees and stabilise the housing market.” 

So it’s not just the lowly popsicle that gets frozen out in this inflation crisis.  Inflation leaves a lot of people out in the cold. In fact, you could argue that, whatever your flavour, the time to buy a popsicle is now.  Your nickels will never be worth more than they are today!  And what will they ever buy next year?

It all brings to mind the “moth and rust” which “decay” our wealth, according to Scripture.  Indeed, the inspired counsel is to do something with your money before it erodes: “Don’t lay up treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal.”  Now there is a poetic description of inflation if ever there was one!  The value of currency being stolen and eroded with the passage of time!

Rather, we are called upon to put our money to work while it still holds its value.  Rather than stash it away and hope it holds its worth, we should put it to use in ways that will bless the world.  “Sell what you have and give to the poor,” is the Lord’s advice to a rich young synagogue ruler, who had “great possessions.” “You will have treasure in heaven.”  “Tell those who are rich to be rich in good works,” says Paul to Timothy.  “Instruct them to do good… to be generous and ready to share, treasuring up for themselves a firm foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.”

In other words, there are benefits to putting your money to work while you can.  Not only does your money become a source of blessing to others, it brings back a healthy return for you!  When you bless others with your wealth, it is like you have just invested in your heavenly bank account, transferring your holdings from our inflationary economy to Heaven’s — where inflation is non-existent!  There, and there alone, “moth and rust do not corrupt and thieves do not break through and steal.”  Imagine!  An investment which is entirely inflation-proof!  

Not only that, but you also get a large return on your money in this life!  When you live in such an open-handed way, according to the apostle Paul, you “take hold of that which is truly life.” As Daniel Habben puts it, “ If you want to take hold of that which is really life, then let go of your love for money and grasp onto your loving Saviour… It’s in serving that we find life…. And God has promised to give us that which we need so that we are free to serve others.”

The opposite of such freedom to serve is a kind of bondage to your holdings.  When they asked John D. Rockefeller how much money it takes to make a man happy, he said, “Just a little bit more.”  And so we too think that if only we could only accumulate a bit more money, life would be great. How can we not know by now that amassing infinite money has the opposite effect?  It was in the year 250 that Bishop Cyprian lamented the state of the rich in his Carthage:  

“Their property held them in chains…chains which shackled their courage and choked their faith and hampered their judgment and throttled their soul…If they stored up their treasure in heaven, they would not now have an enemy and a thief within their own household…They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned: enslaved as they are to their own property, they are not the masters of their money but its slaves.”

How much better to rise to the challenge posed by American Philosopher Cornel West:  “You have to have a habitual vision of greatness … you have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity. You won’t confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won’t confuse your prosperity with your magnanimity … You will believe in fact that living is connected to giving.”

Thornton Wilder said, “Money is like manure: it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.”  

And to Rick Warren we ascribe the final word: “The way you store up treasure in heaven is by investing in getting people there.”