If you are interested in reading how a biblical history could be viewed today, you can read my story about idolatry and the failing of men who worship God.
http://kaghijlar-stewardship.blogspot.com/2010/06/enemy-within.html

I dealt with my embarassment of my fundamentalist, truth sans much grace upbringing in the same way a lot of emergents are now – by over-compensating on every social issue I could, in hopes of proving to everyone how tolerant and open-minded I was.

However that was 15 years ago, somehow you and your spouse put up with a good bit of this from me back at a certain music conservatory

I suppose what changed during the past 10 years was seeing the power of God to physically heal people and raise them even from the dead. A God who manifests that sort of power today surely requires us to take him seriously. I learned all the theological/apologetics type stuff growing up – but from people who denied God’s manifestation of power today.

I think that’s the key to getting some of these emergents out of this fad, and into a better balance of grace AND truth. And in my opinion, the overall church would be much the better, having members who have wrestled with these cultural/political hot-button issues. They will “emerge” with Truth trumping political correctness – while retaining cultural relevance, political tact, and care for others. CBB

Of course, back when I opposed you on the Mac, I was lobbying Mrs. Buser to purchase a Commodore 128 — which was a good machine (and a whole lot cheaper than a Mac at the time). I hereby admit, however, that you were right and I was wrong.

There, does that make you happy? Huh?

Banks are businesses (for better or for worse) which need to show a profit. To show a profit they need to bring in income through interest on loans. So they started finding a way to make mortgage lending a growth business instead of a staple. That’s where the new loans, like 100% financing, 5 year interest only, etc., came onto the market. Then with these new kinds of loans there was a similar rush to give the loans to anyone, with little or no interest in the long term ability to pay when secondary terms kicked in. This is partially the fault of unscrupulous lenders who simply lent money to anyone then sold loans to more respectable banks. (No regulation = complete legal but totally irresponsible) The people applying for loans are also at fault for borrowing huge sums of money without reading or understanding the risks they were taking on. Also at fault–investors and investment managers who encouraged the growth as a shareholder and only looked at the profit.

So now we’re at that point where the borrowers aren’t paying back the loans (for many reasons), the banks that own the loans are foreclosing instead of renegotiating, the mortgage lenders aren’t making new loans because the banks are finally not interested in buying them, and the banks have a lot of houses instead of a lot of cash. The market side of things is that real estate (i.e. mortgages) was sold to an investment industry as a commodity that could only go up. So now you have people’s retirement savings wrapped up in the value of real estate across the country. You also have banks that are paying more attention to who they lend money to and tightening their belts.

The net: people are losing their homes to foreclosure, banks are lending less money for everything, not just housing, and the stock market continues to tumble because the banks are struggling.

A solution that will encourage banks to renegotiate the existing loans on houses instead of foreclosing will go a long way to fix the problem. A solution that will also encourage ongoing lending by banks is also key to ensuring that people are able to buy houses, cars, college, and to start new business. Infusing cash into this industry at the business side with oversight to ensure the taxpayer is the beneficiary should go a long way to keep the nation from repeating the events that some consider caused the great depression.

–David

Regarding our fellow CIM alumns, I’d expect such commentary, based on our experience there. Great musicians though! CBB