Longing Logos - Page 6 of 8 - God | Life

April 21, 2020May 1, 2020

Lehman’s Lasting Legacy on the Federal Reserve

It has been only a little over a decade yet it feels like a century ago perhaps because it also feels like the latest iteration of the Gilded Age. On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. In (this summary of) his paper, Laurence Ball (2016) asks, “Why did the Federal Reserve [Fed] let Lehman Brothers fail?” He follows with, “Fed officials say they lacked the legal authority to rescue the firm, because it did not have adequate collateral to borrow the cash it needed.” He (p2) writes, “According to Bernanke (FCIC testimony, 2010): ‘[T]he only way we could have saved Lehman would have been by breaking the law, and I’m not sure I’m willing to accept those consequences for the Federal Reserve and for our systems of laws. I just don’t think that would be appropriate.’”

Ball (p2) disputes the Fed’s official line and Bernanke’s explanation. Instead, Ball concludes “that the explanation offered by Fed officials is incorrect, in two senses: a perceived lack of legal authority was not the reason for the Fed’s inaction; and the Fed did in fact have the authority to rescue Lehman.” He argues that, based on a de novo examination of its finances, Lehman did have enough collateral and that the Fed prevented it from using the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF).

The sensitivity around this question is that Lehman’s failure was a cataclysmic event for financial markets and for the global economy. If the Fed had allowed it to fail on dubious grounds, it would reflect a gross error in judgment and even incompetence. Ball (p3) states, “The record also shows that the decision to let Lehman fail was made primarily by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson,” even though this is the Fed’s purview not the Treasury’s, and the decision was made presumably considering political sensitivities. (You might also recall that Paulson was the former chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, a competing investment bank, and if there were any ulterior motives, that would have been corruption.)

Therefore, the primary questions are: Why did the Fed not rescue Lehman? Did it have the legal authority to do so? Did Lehman have adequate collateral available? Were there political or other reasons for the decision?

The Complexities

In fairness to the Fed, it can get sued, and it has. Most notably, it got sued by former AIG CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, who after a fair amount of drama lost his case with the court ruling that he did not have legal standing to pursue it. Instead, AIG did, and it had declined to do so. (In case you are interested in listening to Greenberg’s side of the story.) The prior ruling, in June 2015, had ruled in Greenberg’s favor but awarded no damages, and as Moyer (2017) reports the court stated that “the Federal Reserve had overstepped its authority in taking the stake in A.I.G.”

Thus, if the Fed indeed had legal concerns, the ensuing events would suggest that they were reasonable and legitimate. Also, in the United States, rehypothecation of collateral (repledging) is limited by Rule 15c3-3 of the SEC, but the United Kingdom had no such restriction. Lehman’s bailout would have included its foreign subsidiaries including its UK-based broker dealer. Thus, in terms of the counterfactual, had collateral been posted, it is uncertain who or which institution would have had final claim to it: other holders of the collateral or the Fed.

This potential concern for the Fed seems supported by Ball’s (p5) description of its actions, “The entity that Barclays almost purchased on the 14th, and which famously filed for bankruptcy on the 15th, was Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LBHI), a corporation with many subsidiary companies. Most of these subsidiaries also entered bankruptcy immediately, but one did not: Lehman Brothers Inc. (LBI), which was Lehman’s broker-dealer in New York. The Fed kept LBI in business from September 15 to September 18 by lending it tens of billions of dollars through the Primary Dealer Credit Facility; after that, Barclays purchased part of LBI and the rest was wound down.” Also, LBI was heavily involved in the repo market, with its book still relatively intact perhaps due to access to the PDCF, and LBI’s disorderly unwinding might have been detrimental to the important money market.

Prior to Lehman’s failure, the Fed managed the sale of Bear Stearns, another failed investment bank, to JPMorgan Chase. The Fed subsequently set up the PDCF. (Another question that remains perhaps even more of a mystery is why Lehman did not avail itself of the PDCF earlier when its insolvency would not have been in question.) The Fed’s intervention in AIG involved a considerable equity stake, as the corporation was effectively nationalized. Thus, these two outcomes, managed sale and nationalization were not bailouts in the sense of what was to come.

Lehman – The Lesson Learned

Lehman’s bankruptcy triggered a credit crunch, and the Fed’s reaction was an alphabet soup of “special facilities,” including ones for the money market mutual fund industry, which experienced a run, and commercial paper, which froze. The Fed effectively backstopped trillion-dollar industries and provided trillions of dollars in additional support to various institutions. The knee-jerk reaction suggests that the Fed and others underestimated the impact of Lehman’s failure, and in its aftermath, decided to dramatically reverse course to a “whatever-it-takes” approach.

Lehman – The Lesson to Unlearn

The last lesson needs to be unlearned. As it turns out, what we have really learned is that moral hazard is a serious concern that has not been adequately considered or appreciated. The correct approach is to either allow firms to file bankruptcy or truly nationalize them. The focus of bailouts should be people not corporations. The American people’s tax dollars are not a piggy bank for irresponsible corporations. They are its collective contribution to build a better society for themselves.

Dramatically reversing course from what was once a more free-market ideology to a bastardized version of Keynesian economics takes the American economy and people from one extreme to another. This legacy of Lehman’s downfall is rearing its ugly head as the Fed bails out entire industries and corporations with no restraint and no accountability during this present crisis. It was irresponsible and immoral then, and it still is now. The American people deserve better.

Symmetric Storm, Asymmetric Shock and the Immorality of Fed Policy

Some have called it “the great equalizer.” In some ways, this is an accurate description. The pandemic does not discriminate, although certainly some people are more vulnerable to the disease. One could also describe the coronavirus pandemic as a symmetric storm, one that is howling across the world so fiercely that some are wondering if they are, in fact, hearing the harbinger of the apocalypse. However, the effects of the pandemic, like previous crises, are not symmetric but instead, have resulted in an asymmetric shock.

The response of the “technocratic class,” in true elitist fashion, has also been anything but symmetric. It has been a moral failure of monumental proportions. However, this is nothing new; it is just a new low. For decades, the elite in the United States and around the world have been more preoccupied with advancing their own political, academic and professional careers than about the people they are privileged with the responsibility of serving, the people whose interests they have a moral obligation to protect and to promote.

Instead, central banks and other institutions around the world have created policies that cater to the powers that be, multinational corporations and the rich. Understandably, monetary policy is difficult for many people to understand beyond basics, such as the lowering and raising of interest rates, its theoretical effects on inflation and unemployment and, perhaps, a general understanding of the mechanisms with which central banks implement the policy, what was, in the United States, known as open market operations.

Fed Response 2008

In response to the financial crisis of 2008/9, the United States central bank, the Federal Reserve (Fed), started using a set of monetary policy tools that fall under the umbrella of unconventional monetary policy. One of these policies is known as quantitative easing. It should be noted that these are experimental policies (the Japanese experience notwithstanding), and the experiment is clearly failing. Prior to the financial crisis, the Fed maintained a balance sheet that was around 800 billion.

After hitting the zero-lower-bound, meaning interest rates could not be lowered any further (aside from negative interest rates, a topic for another day), the Fed resorted to quantitative easing. They began purchasing assets not to target short-term interest rates, money market rates, such as the fed funds and the repo rates, but to lower longer-term interest rates.

Fed – Interest Rates and Morality

The Bible clearly prohibits usury, more precisely, charging interest at all; for example, “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest,” Exodus 22:25, and “Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest,” (Deuteronomy 23:19).

McCleary and Barro (2019, p11) in their book, The Wealth of Religions (support your local bookstore), wrote the following with respect to the secularization hypothesis: “Secularization applied to some aspects of John Calvin’s city of Geneva and its regulation of economic activity, especially the distinction doctrinally made between interest and usury. Interest was an economic necessity for commercial and financial transactions and was allowed by the authorities. The maximum interest rate, set at 5 percent, was regulated by the Genevan government and the Consistory, a corporate religious-moral committee of the government whose judgments were enforced by the city council…”.

Interest rates above the regulated rate were considered usurious; however, they explain that this was raised to 6.7 percent while Calvin was still living and to 10 percent after his death. With these and related actions, the city of Geneva apparently liberated itself from the theological restriction and began what they describe as “the secularization of economic activity in Geneva.”

Another way to describe it would be, thus began the unleashing of unbridled capitalism. The immorality of usury is obvious. One only has to look at its modern manifestations, such as Payday loans. Even the actions of the recently deceased former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker who raised interest rates to control inflation, an action which predictably led to a recession, should be reexamined to possibly find a better approach.

The immorality of the opposite of high interest rates, low interest rates, particularly for an extended period of time, has not been adequately discussed or perhaps even considered. Volcker’s successor, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan depended on this form of management to prop up financial markets and, arguably secondarily, the real economy, which has had various negative effects, such as asset price bubbles, excessive speculation and crises among others.

Fed – Bailouts

In more recent years, financial markets have become dependent not only on perpetually low interest rates but also on eye-popping amounts of central bank intervention, trillions of dollars, often in the form of “special facilities,” financial/legal vehicles that the Fed has been using to circumvent its requirement to hold only government-issued (T-bills, Treasuries, etc.) or government-backed (Agency MBS) securities. (The exact totals of “bailout” money, regardless of whether it is on the balance sheet or in special facilities, depends on how one counts it and what the Fed has been willing to disclose. It should be required to disclose it all.)

Not only are the Fed’s policies causing imbalances and other issues, but the key question is: why are the very corporations that have been causing our economic and financial problems being bailed out with trillions of dollars while the American people are suffering and being abandoned by the institutions that are supposed to be serving them? These central bank actions (both here and abroad) are exacerbating the asymmetric shock on the rich and the poor, on richer and poorer countries.

The Fed will attempt to provide pacifying, pseudo-intellectual arguments to justify these grossly immoral actions. They cannot obfuscate the truth. The institution is failing the American people whose taxes are being used in ways that are detrimental to their interests and contrary to how they should be used. This exploitation of the American people and corruption of the Fed needs to stop. The American people and people around the world deserve better from their institutions, their leaders and the “technocratic elite.”

Between the Scylla of Shut Down and the Charybdis of Open Up

Between the Scylla and the Charybdis — Johann Heinrich Füssli – Odysseus in Front of Scylla and Charybdis

Christians have historically navigated between the Scylla of legalism and the Charybdis of license. The Bible begins with the Book of Genesis, and God basically gives Adam and Eve one simple “law” to obey. Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They disobeyed him and thus began mankind’s odyssey.

Scylla of Legalism

As we move further into the Five Books of Moses, the Pentateuch, there is a proliferation of laws. As Father Longenecker (2014) explains, “For the first time obeying a law code was the way to make God happy.” Perhaps it was also a way for Moses and Aaron to keep an unruly, disobedient and ungrateful caravan of freed Hebrew slaves from angering God and from exhausting them any more than they had.

Then comes Paul and Christianity. Longenecker says, “Unfortunately, the law is not enough, and St Paul unlocked the riddle by telling us that the whole reason for the law was not to make us good enough, but to show us that we could never be good enough. The Christian religion was another innovation. Instead of living by the law, we are called to live by faith in a dynamic relationship with God.”

Charybdis of License

Most people, even Christians, might ask: what does it mean to be “called to live by faith in a dynamic relationship with God”? It does not provide any real guidance. Although Christians have forgotten or ignored much of the Law of Moses, the Ten Commandments continue to have a simplicity and practicality that is conducive to obedience. It is much easier to follow laws if one can actually remember them. License on the other hand requires no memorization and no restraint. Its potential destructiveness is also obvious.

Scylla of Shut Down and the Charybdis of Open Up

Today, as we debate the Scylla of shut down and the Charybdis of open up the economy, we would do well to remember that the safest passage in this crisis is navigating between the two extremes. The left seems to lean toward shutting down, maintaining stay-at-home orders, and the right seems to lean toward opening up, returning to normal.

There are economic consequences to maintaining restrictions that are too strict that go well beyond the stock market but affect ordinary people in real and painful ways. We need to be sensitive to the financial precariousness of their lives and understand that their economic vulnerabilities can quickly develop into other problems, such as domestic violence, child abuse, inescapable poverty and debt.

On the other hand, no restrictions at all would almost certainly exacerbate the spread of the coronavirus, which would bring with it not just illness and death but also economic ramifications, as people would be required to go to work and would feel compelled to do so even if they were feeling unwell.

This is not a matter of right versus left, legalism or license, shutting down or opening up. It is a matter of assigning proper weight to the risks associated with veering too much in one direction or the other and finding the correct middle path. Jesus’s perfect navigation between the extremes of legalism and license is often underappreciated. He never actually lowered the standards or diluted “the law.” In many respects, he raised them. However, he simultaneously extended tremendous compassion and generosity.

We would do well to adopt his approach to the extent we could – strict but compassionate. Ideally, our government would have acted faster and with more preparation and planning, in particular, making sure that we had adequate tests and medical equipment and were tracing any people suspected of having come into contact with the virus. They would have had to follow stricter self-isolation guidelines, i.e. quarantine, while the remainder of the population could have continued life under a laxer set of preventive measures. Alas, neither competence nor compassion can be found in the present administration.

My Brother’s Keeper

For the rest of us, let us live in faith in God and in each other. Let us be our brother’s keeper and think of others’ interests as well as our own. Let us remember that some among us are more vulnerable to sickness and death while others are more vulnerable to poverty, which can also lead to sickness and death. Let us not judge others for their particular fears or frustrations, but instead let us pray that our leaders will arrive at a reasonable set of guidelines that avoids both the health and economic dangers to the greatest extent possible.

April 13, 2020May 1, 2020

Forty-Eight Hours of Breath

Reverend Dr. William Barber recently asked the question, “If you knew you had only forty-eight hours of breath left, what kind of world would you use that breath to fight for? What kind of world, what kind of nation?” It is the question we should all be asking ourselves everyday of our lives. However, many people will never ask it. They will breathe their last in the same stupor or, worse yet, sin in which they lived their lives.

They will care more about death walking through their locked door, instead of passing over it, than about the fact that while living they did not use their time or their lives well and did not treat others the way they ought to have, the way Jesus taught us. They will not have stopped to examine their lives or their conscience. Perhaps because if they had, they might not have liked what they found.

Forty-Eight Hours – As Carnegie Lay Dying

Approximately 100 years ago, as World War I, which had ravaged the world, was coming to an end, only to lead to the economic consequences of the peace and World War II, Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men in the world, who had amassed a fortune by the cruelest possible treatment and exploitation of his fellow Americans, his workers, lay dying.

How did he choose to live his last hours? Standiford in his biography, Meet You in Hell, says that Carnegie sought reconciliation not with God but with someone possibly even more sinful than he, his once friend and partner turned foe and competitor, Henry Clay Frick. What was Frick’s response? Standiford writes, “‘Yes, you can tell Carnegie I’ll meet him,’ Frick said finally, wadding the letter and tossing it back at Bridge [Carnegie’s personal secretary]. ‘Tell him I’ll see him in Hell, where we both are going.’”

Redemption Cannot Be Bought

In his later years, Carnegie had decided to become a philanthropist. His foundations are numerous, as we all know since they bear his name, and his legacy, Standiford describes as follows: “To this day he is often credited with having established the precedent of corporate philanthropy; as one commentator observed, when Bill Gates makes a gift of some of his hard-earned millions, it is probably the ghost of Andrew Carnegie that guides his outstretched hand.”

I would hope not, for the Gates’s and for the world’s sake. Despite all his philanthropy, Carnegie did not seem to get it even at the end of his life. Perhaps motivated by guilt, fear or legacy, he was determined to remake his image from a brutal plutocrat to a benevolent philanthropist.

One of Jesus’s final acts before his crucifixion was the Last Supper, during which he washed his Apostles’ feet. It is one of the most emotional aspects of Jesus’s life for Christians around the world. It was a profound act of humility and love. I have witnessed many people cry during its reenactment.

By contrast, Carnegie’s final exchange reveals his preoccupation with the world. It hounded him until the end. What do others think of him? Well, he got his answer from Frick. Standiford says, “And all’s well since it is growing better and when I [Carnegie] go for a trial for the things done on earth, I think I’ll get a verdict of ‘not guilty’ through my efforts to make the earth a little better than I found it.”

If Carnegie thought he could buy forgiveness or redemption, Frick disabused him of this notion, and just to turn the sword, confirmed with pleasure that, indeed, Carnegie would end up in hell. Forgiveness is granted by victims and by God. Christians believe that salvation comes through faith and/or works, with their relative measure in debate. The simple and, likely, most honest understanding is that redemption and judgment are God’s purview, and it is best to just live according to the Way, love, trust and surrender to God.

The Last Judgment

I argued that annihilation is the greatest punishment. It is nothingness; it is to be without a soul. Some might have found this surprising. How could nothing be worse than eternal damnation? Well, if hell is an eternal, boiling cauldron of perversity, Frick seemed to relish the continuation of their earthly torments in hell, and better yet, perhaps he hoped that Carnegie, in his final days, would be tortured by yet resigned to this outcome.

This brings us back to the present. The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare many unfortunate truths. One of these is that many of our nation’s people and policies are callous, even cruel, particularly towards the poor and vulnerable. If Carnegie dreaded hell, as he seemed to indicate toward the end of his life, perhaps the larger question is: why did he choose to live a life on earth that he would find miserable in hell? The question for all of us is: if you have forty-eight hours or even forty-eight years to live, what and who are you breathing for?

April 8, 2020April 30, 2020

Who Is a Christian?

It is a harmless question. Are you a Christian? Yet, it invites responses that are not harmless. They are often judgmental and inappropriate. Christianity started as a Jewish sect, and it retains features of this origin in numerous respects. One of these is related to identity. People often identify themselves as Christian if they come from Christian families. In fact, the concept of religious identity as part of one’s lineage can be found in numerous faith traditions.

When some Evangelicals speak about being born again, they often refer to John 3, and I would argue without actually understanding what Jesus was explaining to Nicodemus. The author of this post declares, “No one, however, is ever automatically a Christian by birth.” In case the author is confused, no one person decides these matters. The church, in its entire body, does, and ultimately, God decides.

John 3:5-8 “Jesus answered [Nicodemus], ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again.” The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.’”

Christian – Societal Definition

Children born into Christian families can definitely claim to be Christian. They are Christian by birth. Many of them will have been baptized, i.e. born of water, as infants, and they will often have received Christian names. (In this context, Jesus might mean “born of water” with a double meaning, baptism by water and born of the womb. The latter is supported with “flesh gives birth to flesh.”) Their parents are choosing to carry on their religious tradition, to define them as followers of Christ, as their own parents might have done for them. This is the societal and literal definition of Christian, and it is an entirely valid one.

Christian – Spiritual Definition

Jesus was talking about a spiritual definition when he added “and the Spirit.” He was talking about a transformation that occurs within the person in response to the grace of the Holy Spirit. However, the Holy Spirit is a mysterious force, and it is entirely possible that a person goes through his or her life, living piously, without ever having a noticeable or profound experience with the Spirit.

Would Jesus say that this person is not a “true follower”? I will leave that up to him to determine, but some Evangelicals seem to have already decided that for him. They might consider that we do not always recognize the Holy Spirit at work. In which case, how would we be able to ascertain whether one meets this criterion of being a Christian or not? On the other hand, one might have been born again only to fall away again.

The following statement, like many of Jesus’s statements, can be hard to understand: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” I understand it as the nature of the Holy Spirit becomes manifest in the person, and depending on one’s relationship with God, one might be called to take unpredictable paths to fulfill his will. You hear God’s voice. Whether or not you can tell where it is coming from or where it will take you is not important. What is important is that you can hear it.

Becoming Christian

I am a nondenominational Christian and consider myself born again. I have no vested interest in the answer to this question. However, I do care that the Christian faith is protected and that it welcomes others with open arms. To become a Christian in a societally defined sense might involve some steps and some time, which are determined by each denomination. To become spiritually Christian, however, is determined by God and God alone, no matter what others might claim.

For a different interpretation of the last verses quoted: Piper (2009)

April 7, 2020April 29, 2020

Monasteries and the Art of Quieting the Disquieted Mind

For those who are struggling with self-isolation, they might consider that this life has been the choice of many deeply spiritual people for millennia, such as Christian (cloistered nuns or) monks, who still live in monasteries around the world. (I highly recommend visiting them, particularly for a retreat.) Granted, a house full of noisy children and/or pets is hardly conducive to quiet reflection. However, one can adopt many of the monks’ daily habits. From what I could tell, their days are quite structured and oriented around prayer and productivity.

Quieting with Prayer

Praying is centering. If there is one thing I highly recommend practicing, and it does require practice, it is prayer. For those who struggle with it, as I did and still do, just to a lesser extent, I suggest having a prayer that you like, memorize it, and start praying regularly by reciting it. My “go-to” is The Lord’s Prayer. I have known it by heart since I was a child, and it is like the “comfort food” of prayers for me, deeply familiar, complete, and I can linger on each word as if Jesus were saying them with me. The Hail Mary is another familiar prayer.

Praying a rosary, which includes both of these prayers and some others, is another way to pray by recitation. Since the structure is laid out, one does not need to think about it. One might need to get used to moving through the rosary’s beads without looking, but it will come with practice.

Our own prayers, “free form” prayers, can be about anything. They are actually just one’s communication with an omniscient God, so there is no point in trying to hide anything. Just speak your heart, mind and soul to the Lord. Praying with scripture, which I would describe as mediating on the Word, is one of my favorite ways to pray. Catholics call it Lectio Divina. I actually made up my own style of it.

Quieting with Art

One of the things I used to do quite often was look at art, and I was reminded of how infrequently I do so now when I read this post. I used to even copy others’ drawings, which creates a certain intimacy between the original creator and the copier – you.

Your hand, temporally removed, tries to trace outlines that originated in their minds, which could be some of the greatest there ever were, before making it onto their canvas or other material. It is not just an artistic exercise but also a spiritual one that connects us to ancient friends and to a past to which we should always try to belong. It is our collective history, our memory of some of the best aspects of being human: the true, the good, and the beautiful.

As an example, the story of the Good Samaritan can be rendered in a myriad of ways, and whichever way the artist chooses provides insight into the person while also, hopefully, illuminating the Way. Biblical art is really an artistic rendering of the Word without words.

Quiet Unity

I could tell you that the Good Samaritan is a story about prejudice and compassion, or you could gaze upon the image of a man struggling to lift another helpless, vulnerable man and wonder why did he do it. Why did he help someone he was taught to hate and who was taught to hate him? The artist chose to depict the physicality of the moment, which heightens the solitude of both men, the difficulty of a sole man to lift another, and simultaneously their unity.

One could describe the art of quieting a disquieted mind as finding unity in solitude. It is the art of binding our fragmented mind, weary with worry, distracted with stress, with the rest of our being, and bringing our entire being into a quiet state of unity with our creator.

The inspiration for this post: Oakley (2020)

April 6, 2020April 30, 2020

Songs of Trust Spoken by Children

Our children, meaning all of the children on this planet, are our future and our light. Many children around the world are suffering because man can be evil. Adults are betraying our little angels. As we move through Holy Week, one that is particularly emotionally intense, let us try to be more like the most holy among us; let us cherish their innocent grace and emulate their natural resilience; let us live up to the trust they place in us.

Psalm 23 from the Hebrew Bible has been translated, reworked and interpreted numerous times. The words bring comfort to the reader not necessarily because of the language or the structure of the psalm but because of what it declares – trust in God. A simple message that transcends the song and the original context. Better than a harp, a child’s voice can elevate the psalmist’s trust with its delicate musicality.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Losing Trust

However, David, the psalmist, became sinful and fell from grace. He lost trust; he betrayed God. Like Adam and Eve, he did not dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Societies from time immemorial have feared the gods, which they often regarded as petulant and easily provoked. Contrary to some opinions, the Christian God is not fickle. We are fickle, and Jesus knew this.

John 2:23-25 “Now while he [Jesus] was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.”

Become Like Children

We are called to love God unconditionally and to follow the Way, and if we do so, we will have no fear and no want. God will not betray us. Instead, we sin over and over again. We do not follow God’s commandments. Additionally, we expect and condition our love, mainly on matters related to our earthly existence. Who are we to expect anything of God? God is God, and we are but mere sinful mortals. Jesus taught us complete trust and love, and we have reminders of him everywhere in our children, in God’s children.

Matthew 18:2-4 “He [Jesus] called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’”

Becoming like a child is not to abandon the reason, knowledge or wisdom we might have gained over the years, but it is to render our spirit open and accepting to the Lord. It is to give without asking, to pray without expecting, to love without conditioning. It is to be God’s child again.

As Easter approaches, let us pray for peace and remember that we have a responsibility to our children, the innocents, to protect and to love them because they belong to God. No matter where we may dwell, they still dwell in his house.

https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/stories/extremists-killed-her-mother-but-hearing-this-young-girl-read-psalm-23-inspires-hope

April 2, 2020May 1, 2020

A Great Awakening: ESG Investing Edition?

This post is part of a broader subject that very much deserves public attention and discussion. Capitalism as it has been practiced since 1776, the year Adam Smith first published his book The Wealth of Nations, coincidentally, the same year as our Declaration of Independence, is failing. It is time to accept this fact and create something different – something better.

Moral capitalism is a term and concept that has been bandied around for a while, and its full realization in all aspects of our economy, including financial markets, is long overdue. A shift to one aspect of moral capitalism has been happening to a certain extent in, of all places, the investment community, driven mainly by the demands of institutional investors.

ESG Investing

Faith-based institutions have played a considerable role in the advancement of Environmental, Social, (Corporate) Governance (ESG) investing, also known as sustainable investing, since they are particularly sensitive to the companies or industries included in their portfolios. For example, with Pope Francis’s release of the environmentally oriented encyclical Laudato Si, the Catholic Church would do well by putting words to action and decarbonizing all of its portfolios.

Although ESG investing has been gaining steam, asset managers, traditional and alternative, have been too slow in truly implementing it. Partly, this is due to a lack of data, although the EU is now leading the data collection effort, but it is also due to the managers’ lack of foresight, knowledge, skill and genuine commitment to sustainable investing.

Some investment managers have their regular funds and similar ESG funds that exclude the companies and industries that would not meet the UN PRI or the manager’s ESG criteria. This could be acceptable in the interim, until the investment community as a whole fully transitions to ESG investing, as long as managers are not simply repurposing an old fund with an ESG label and engaging in “green washing.” (Note, the institutional investors have gotten wise and can tell.) The managers need to change their underlying investment processes and, ideally, their entire culture to a responsible, long-term investment focus.

The hedge fund industry, active managers with higher fees and often a focus on absolute returns, would be wise to adopt ESG investing, since it would be a real value added, particularly as the industry needs to justify its raison d’être in a time of passive investment.

Also, a good hedge fund manager, like a traditional one, minimizes exposure to systemic risks and acts as a shield against what is often mislabeled as a black swan event. It would be hard to categorize the effects of climate change, which has been documented for at least half a century, as a black swan event.

In fact, the financial crisis was often referred to as such, when truly savvy investors saw it coming. If one was looking at the economy, the proliferation of certain financial instruments, the data, and the historical frequency with which crises have beset capitalist economies, it was hardly a black swan event.

Some might argue that many institutional investors need alpha/pure performance and any potentially “compromising” considerations, such as ESG, should be secondary at best. The premise of this argument would be that alpha and ESG are at odds. Let us consider. If all of the alpha generated over some extended period of time is wiped out as the “black swan” takes over the lagoon, then all those fees paid were effectively a waste of good money, particularly when pensions funds cannot afford to lose any money.

Additionally, the governance factor is low-hanging fruit. There has been inadequate pressure by institutional investors on management and on corporate oversight to lower executive compensation, improve the treatment and compensation of labor, include other stakeholders, such as labor, on the board of directors and to the minimize the short-term focus, including share buybacks, i.e. quarterly capitalism. I would argue that the mismanagement of these companies is often directly related to the investors’ underwhelming returns.

Nonetheless, the ESG trend is positive. Let us keep it moving forward and fix our economy so that it serves everyone. That would be moral capitalism, and that would be a great awakening.

April 1, 2020May 1, 2020

Eternal Truths: Grief, Death and the Cross

I won’t pretend to speak about grief with any real knowledge, as I have never experienced it on a deeply personal level. However, I find Good Friday the saddest time in the liturgical calendar and, for me, it best approximates a feeling of grief. Like the rest of us, I know how the story ends, it ends joyfully with Jesus’s resurrection on Easter Sunday, yet it is so moving and hard every time.

Harrell writes, “the manger is not the central symbol of our faith. The empty tomb isn’t either. Christians decided early on that the sign of their faith would be a cross.” He goes on to say, “We hang on to our crosses, even at Easter, because it is in the hard places of life where Christ’s presence with us proves most holy.”

Grief and the Passion

I agree, but I think that Christians chose the cross to symbolize them and the faith because the crucifixion is the most selfless aspect of Jesus’s life. It is an incomparable sacrifice, and if you have the courage to engage with the Passion fully, it can bring you to your knees, maybe to the ground completely.

During Catholic masses on Good Friday, priests will lie prostrate before the altar, above which often hangs a cross or a crucifix. Just to watch that act of devotion and humility can bring one to tears. Theirs is a gesture of grateful submission that invokes Jesus’s gracefully submission to God the Father’s will.

This is also why Christians around the world literally walk Jesus’s path, the Stations of the Cross, year after year. They want to remember his pain and suffering, his divine grace, his love and compassion at the most difficult moment of his life, at his death.

To remember Jesus’s beauty in death is also a way of vicariously engaging with our suffering and our mortality. When death calls us, will we respond with bitterness, resentfulness, anger, fear, or depression? Or will Jesus’s steps to his Father remind us that we can bear the momentary weight of the cross because each step ultimately brings us closer to another life, one free of everything that burdens us in this one.

Grief and the Coronavirus Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has not fundamentally changed death’s calculus, as it is always and forever a possibility. Really, what has changed is our awareness of the possibility of death or serious illness and our daily lives. As a thought-exercise, imagine if the probability of death were always at a relatively heightened level, as it is now. Imagine that it were even higher, such as during the Bubonic plague.

If this were “the new normal,” would we alter our lives permanently? Constantly hiding in our homes, practicing social distancing, or would we just resign ourselves to a lower life expectancy and a higher likelihood of death, and simply change psychologically or spiritually instead? Would we make peace with death?

If it is the latter, what would the shape of the peace be? Would it take the shape of the cross? Ultimately, the death that awaits us is unlikely to be anywhere near as hard as Jesus’s. And for many people around the world, they might view death as easier than their present lives.

For all of us, Jesus’s life and death is a source of comfort. In our darkest moments, we can find him there, or we can choose to go to him. To kneel in a quiet church, alone, staring up at the cross with his dead, tortured body hanging from it, and in our gratitude and submission, we can escape everything else because, ultimately, nothing else really matters.

I have no standard words of comfort to offer those in fear of death or those in grief, no angels or other well-meaning but essentially hallow allusions. I have only the truth, Jesus’s truth, and I hope that in his divine truth, one can find the shape of peace. It is the shape that Christians everywhere wear with pride, strength and full knowledge that the way, the truth and the life leads one out of this world and into the next.

March 31, 2020April 12, 2021

On American Freedom and Independence

Some Europeans say that Americans fetishize freedom. I counter that we give it the respect it deserves. Freedom is our God-given right. Our exercise of our American freedom expresses our humanity and is integral to our relationship with each other and with God. God did not create puppets. He created free, independent men and women in his image.

Every single person on our incredible planet is endowed with the right to freedom, and acts such as slavery, indentured servitude, unjustified imprisonment and the like are acts against God himself. Conversely, we glorify God by encouraging each other to indulge in our freedoms while still expecting these choices made of one’s free will to follow the law and to reflect a strong sense of morality, purpose and community.

The nature of these indulgences ought to be related to the limitless range for individual expression. The soldier poet, the ballet dancer hunter, the blue-collar worker writer, the doctor priest, the activist nun, the rock star evangelist, the professor novelist, the artist programmer, there is an endless combination of selves to be claimed by the next bold soul willing to declare to the world, “I define myself; I will not be defined by others.” (See, S.E. Cupp on ballet and hunting and Roman Baca on war and dancing.) That is freedom – American style. I would argue that American freedom is freedom as it ought to be: boundless, surprising, imaginative, rebellious even irreverent.

American Freedom is closely linked to independence. The link between the two might or might not be immediately apparent, but I assure you that they are inextricably intertwined. A country’s citizens who come to depend on their government too much risk both their freedom and independence. One might argue that Americans have too much distrust, dislike and not enough dependence on their government. This might be true. However, one can both strengthen the safety net and governmental institutions so that they work better for the people while, simultaneously, giving them more personal freedom and independence.

American Freedom and Hunting

We have a tradition in this country of hunting and fishing. Although I am opposed to the NRA and trophy hunting, I believe that hunting and fishing are traditional aspects of American life that we should preserve. They are not just sports. They are also practical skills. Hunting and fishing also reflect a fiercely independent American streak, which has characterized the country from the beginning.

Slavery, the genocide of the native people and exploitation of the country’s enviable natural resources was an evil violation of their freedoms and dignities and an abuse of our planet. A respectful relationship with the land, such as Native Americans had and still have, preserves a divine, either Christian or non-Christian, relationship with the earth and with God. It is an explicit understanding that our lives depend on our planet’s life. Any extended contact with nature is rejuvenating for the soul, and when exercised correctly, the act of hunting and fishing is also an acknowledgement of our dependence on God’s creation and each other.

As the beautiful, diverse, complex creatures with whom we share our planet die in a manmade mass extinction, let us use the right to hunt and fish to remind ourselves that all life is precious and interdependent. There are no crops without bees and butterflies. There are no waterfowl without clean bodies of water, and there are no deer without fields and forests. Our planet is not optional. It is absolutely essential to our survival. When we hunt and fish, we assert our freedom, reestablish our independence while simultaneously becoming one with God and the world he created. Defy the stereotypes and labels. Define yourself and with it, American freedom and independence.