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God is with us: Keep the faith

To The Editor:
Sometimes our perspective on certain events can become misguided.
It happened to me several years ago when I was in a car  wreck. I was so upset about my car being totaled beyond repair that I forgot to be thankful that God had spared my life.
This event took place as I was leaving Vanderbilt Hospital, having visited a member of my congregation. It was a dark, raining night, and as I was nearing the Tennessee River Bridge, my car hydroplaned and hit a concrete road divider. My recently, paid-off car, was totaled.
As I sat waiting for a state trooper, I began my pity party. I lashed out at  God and asked, “Why did you not protect me from this wreck? You have promised to always be with me to guide and protect me.” Then, the realization came to me that God was with me and had spared my life. I felt so ashamed and I repented and asked for God’s forgiveness.
Too often we are quick to blame God when things go wrong in our lives when, many times, we have made careless mistakes or poor decisions that bring troubles our way. And we want God to fix it. The truth is that even when we mess up, God, with his love, grace and mercy, will make a way for us when we turn from doing things our way and place our lives totally in his hands and become open to his guidance. God wants us to have the abundant life.
Let us be thankful that God does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)
Keep the faith!
Judd A. Mowery
Troy/Sanders Chapel
United Methodist Churches
Free market does
work, if allowed
To The Editor:
I hope that the current spectacle of unwashed, rowdy college radicals, paid, “organized” “demonstrators” and ancient radical/liberal college professors camped out in New York City, Atlanta and Nashville, etc., shouting about evil, rich people, will spark millions of genuine discussions among parents and children, teachers and students, pastors and congregations.
It seems that many people do not understand the basics of our free economic system. We have a capitalistic free-market system because we are free to buy and sell our goods and services as we will and are able, and vice versa. We are only free as long as we each can do that. Think about it. If someone else can tell you what job you have to do, how much you can charge for your labor, or dictate how much you are paid for your labor, you are not very free, i.e., you are the slave of the person making the rules.
Capitalism is not perfect and there are those who are powerless in any society who deserve to be helped, such as the disabled and children, but that is the appropriate role of churches and local benevolent societies who actually know the people involved, not the far-away national government. If the free market does not make the decision about the value of your labor and your money, then the power to make those decisions will go to some group of men like the king, the dictator, the Communist Central Committee, the Socialist Planning Committee, the Labor Relations Board, the Federal Trade Commission, the Medicare Trust Commission, the Federal Banking Commission, the Federal Exchange Commission — SOMEBODY — will make the decision about what your money is worth and what your labor is worth and that person will have power over your life. Planned economies have been amply tried in the USSR, Cuba and Socialist Europe. They don’t work very well. Why should we go down the same road? Freedom has provided the USA with the greatest standard of living the world has ever seen.
We all need to consider at this point in our life as a nation, just how efficient and effective is the national government at making these huge decisions that affect our lives. The current housing market debacle with all the debt, foreclosures and investment market banking bail-out swindles of the American taxpayers can be traced to a political decision made by government, both parties, a number of years ago that forced banks to lend to people who ordinarily would not have qualified for loans, because it sounded good: “Every American ought to own a home.” So, Congress created a huge government bureaucracy, i.e., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which wasted billions of taxpayer dollars in its administration and fraud and produced the housing bubble. The risk was then speculated on those who are always looking for high risk/high profit investments (the high risk gamblers); but when they lost, we, the taxpayers, bailed them out.
Another example is health care. The current cost excesses can primarily be traced back to the entrance of the government rules regarding Medicare reimbursements to hospitals and doctors at only a percentage of their actual cost of delivering the service. Who do you think is going to pay for the extra 20 percent or so of the cost of the service delivery for the Medicare patient. The doctor? The hospital? The stork? There is no such thing as a free lunch. The insurance company and the insured patients are paying the difference in increased fees and the spiral has continued to go up for many years now, helped along by high malpractice judgments, defensive medicine and a federal regulatory system that restricts the free market.
We need to consider who and where do we want our precious tax dollars spent. Why should we send so much money to Washington and have it “granted” back to us in block grants for the aims and purposes given by our “betters,” with much of it wasted in beauracratic salaries and graft along the way back. Can’t we decide in Obion County what we want to spend our money on?
The free market works if it is allowed to work and it should apply to everybody in society equally. Think about the post office. Who delivers mail and packages more efficiently? The post office? Fed Ex? UPS? Free-market forces keep organizations lean and efficient. Labor should have a free market, too. Why should some board in Washington decide that Boeing can’t build its jets in North Carolina if it can build them cheaper?
Pam Murphy
Hornbeak

Published in The Messenger 10.19.11

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