Scott Cheatham’s Weblog

“Ah, stubborn children,” declares the LORD, “who carry out a plan, but not mine, and who make an alliance, but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin;
(Isaiah 30:1 ESV)

From what I am hearing in news reports, the price of a gallon of gas will finally eclipse $4 a gallon permanently sometime this week. It’s amazing the way prices have risen just since the first of the year. The environmentalists complain that our lifestyles still aren’t changing fast enough while the average Joe that gets interviewed for radio or television complains about how they are going to make it when they have to choose between groceries or fuel.

This week, the G8 nations met for a summit on what should be done to address the issue. Not much was accomplished and OPEC was allowed to leave the meeting unscathed saying the market was well-supplied and the prices are beyond their control. Other nations called on leaders to do more to come up with alternative sources of energy and/or pump more crude to address the global crisis (and it IS global, it’s just not the U.S. that suffers, we just happen to be the biggest customer).

Which leads me to Isaiah. Some may shake their heads or furrow an eyebrow over my quoted passage but I asked myself this question: “Are we as a nation following God’s plan or our own?” Is the oil alliance we made with the largely Muslim nations over my lifetime one that God approves of? I ask these as open questions and welcome your feedback. I hope this doesn’t kill off my readership but makes us think.

As for me, I see this as another example of systemic results. As most of my readers know, I’m big on “Systems Thinking” and how it effects us. As the price of gas has risen, the system it influences has subsequently begun to run like a bad transmission on a worn out Dodge mini-van. The truckers that bring in our supplies have had to increase costs as have the stores. This results in higher prices for us in purchasing nearly everything we need. Consequently, we are having to cut down on buying things, driving only to places we absolutely have to which means lower overall sales at the same stores where prices are going up which then causes them to go up even higher to meet the payroll of the employees of said store. When the profit margin is reduced to a pittance of what it once was, employees are laid off and the cycle worsens. Case in point: my wife needed to buy my daughter an inexpensive pair of tennis shoes for the summer and we elected to go to our local “Super Target” after 10pm last night to find them. Trouble was, the store has made the decision to no longer offer 24 hour convenience. They close now at 10pm and the entire third shift has been reduced to a few stockers for the coming morning. Even at Wal-Mart, groceries are going up even though you wouldn’t know it by the price. Portions are smaller so that the price can remain stable. Do the math, check your purchase by the “cost per ounce” rather than the overall price and you’ll see the difference. My blogging friend Dan Edelen has been hammering on this point for several months now and he’s spot on with his comments.

So what can we do? Not much individually but if we as a nation would seek God’s plan for us, we would see that he’s already provided enough oil in our own borders to get us through the crisis. We need a leader who has the forethought to think ahead systemically and begin the process toward becoming independent of foreign oil and to develop methods of energy that will one day replace how we live. The problem we’ve had is we created a dependent alliance with a neighbor that has no guarantees.

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.
(Proverbs 22:7 ESV)

We say we pay our way so we are not borrowing in that sense but who is the slave here? We are not controlling the price of crude oil. We pay whatever the OPEC Lords want us to. In this way, we are becoming a slave to those nations who’ve become powerful with our money and are now telling us what we are going to do. Sure sounds like slavery to me.

God’s plan will prevail in the end even in this crisis. I just pray that somehow, we find a way to get back “in tune” with his plan and not our own. I doubt that’s going to happen in my lifetime but stranger things have happened. At the very least, I hope we begin to take advantage of the bounty that God has given us by drilling for new oil in our own borders and stop being a slave to OPEC.