Monday, May 19, 2014

Truth Be Told ! ?

“I worship at the altar of the free market.”
(Quote from Gerry Nicholls1 at minute 9:50 on CBC “The Current”: episode titled, “What is the Future of Public Broadcasting in Canada?” broadcast May 14, 2014.2)
Staunch conservative Mr. Nicholls managed to condense into nine words, the “free-market” devotion of millions who have bought, hook-line-and-sinker, the idea that almost everything must “succeed or fail on the basis of the free market” (minute 6:30). A devotion that fails to acknowledge:
▪ the real facts and history of big business;
▪ the natural corruptions of the profit-motive;
▪ the truths obscured by “free-market” platitudes;
▪ real world manipulations, schemes, delusions, and persuasions (aided by communication consultants, like Mr. Nicholls); and
▪ the meaning and purpose of altars. Are they not intended for sacrifice? In Mr. Nicholls' case, sacrifice of what? Truth? Reality? Thoughful analysis?
Makes one wonder:

1) Could this worship of the “free-market” be related in any way to “that great Church”3 that Book of Mormon Nephi warned us about?
And [the angel] said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth. (Book of Mormon 1 Nephi 14:10)
2) Is this “free-market” worship, the kind of self-con included when Jesus said:
And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted [to God’s economy], and I should heal them. (New Testament Matthew 13:14-15)
How long before we Christians recognize that the economic systems of capitalism AND communism are just opposing sides of the same corrupting, counterfeit coin of this worldly realm? and that there is a higher, better way?

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1. Gerry Nicholls is a communications consultant and former vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition (Canada’s largest organization for the defence of economic and political freedoms). See http://www.gerrynicholls.com/
2. http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/current_20140514_13102.mp3
3. See also http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2011/03/econ-009-church-of-laissez-faire.html
http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/search/label/Laissez-faire