Don’t confuse me with a math geek. But even with my schoolhouse arithmetic, the numbers I hear on a regular basis don’t add up.
Here’s a sobering number from the Economic Policy Institute. Globalizing our economy (shipping jobs overseas) has cost Americans plenty. Manufacturing jobs dropped by 5 million, and 70,000 factories have closed. We’ve traded good-paying jobs for cheap foreign products. It doesn’t add up.
Here’s another shocking number. According to CBS News, “In 1953, 98% of men [between 25 and 54] had a job or were looking for one…Today, 7.2 million men have essentially dropped out of the workforce.” These numbers aren’t included in the unemployment figure. That’s why it doesn’t add up.
What about government spending? The U.S. debt has now passed $34 trillion. How long to increase it by a trillion more? About 100 days! That’s right. Our national debt is increasing by ten billion per day! Just the interest on our national debt surpasses the GDP. But those in Congress are disciples of Alfred E. Neuman. “What, me worry?”
For those interested in the future of green energy, Issac Orr observes, “A recent analysis by the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie estimates there will be about 741 gigawatt-hours of battery storage in 2030.…This means the amount of battery storage…for the entire world would be the equivalent of just one percent of Minnesota’s annual energy consumption.” The winner in all this? Not the environment. It’s China—they build the solar panels and batteries.
Of course, average Americans think more about the price of gas or the dramatic increase in groceries than they do about government stats. Did you see the Big Mac combo meal selling for $17.59 at a Connecticut rest stop? Golden arches indeed!
But here’s the math calculation so wrong it could cost millions their forever—the assumption that good deeds will add up to a Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free card.
With thousands of others, I had been trapped in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport when high winds cancelled our flights. I’d helped a lady who needed medicine from her checked baggage, and a priest had seen me do it. “Well,” he commented, “you’ve done your good deed for the day.”
“You’re just the man to answer my question,” I replied. “If God is perfect, His standard would be perfection, wouldn’t it? Now if, on a particular day, I managed to actually be perfect, that day I’d just break even. So how can I get a surplus to compensate for the days I don’t reach perfection?”
After a long minute, he replied, “I teach ethics at the Vatican, but I don’t have an answer for you.” He’s right. It doesn’t add up. We can’t pay good deeds for bad. Only if God provides the credit value of His perfect Son to our account can we enter heaven.
Thankfully, that’s just what He offers us! “God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 5:21, NLT)
Paul explained, “To him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.” (Romans 4:4-5, NKJV)
That’s the only way your books can balance. Go figure.
Article by Jabe Nicholson first published in the Commercial Dispatch, Saturday, March 9, 2024.