Economic policy hinges on stimulating growth. Prior to the 1930s, the United States took a very conservative Laizzes-Faire stance on the economy, and by any standard of measure through the 1920s it seemed to be working well enough - even spectacularly as the decade progressed. But then the Great Depression hit, something that many saw as the quintessential failure of conservative economic policy. It was only with Roosevelt’s unprecedentedly liberal New Deal program coupled with the spending World War II entailed that the economy could get back on its feet again. What then went wrong? What changed in society that rendered an economic policy that had served us well for so long so suddenly obsolete?

Americans in the early 20th century, after enough money for basic needs and a few luxuries, for the most part would opt for more leisure time than more pay. But the early 1920s saw the rise of incredible new technologies to increase productivity per worker hour such as the assembly line. Productivity skyrocketed, leading to a massive glut of overproduction in a number of important fields like automobiles and consumer electronics. Faced with a population for the most part content with their current lot, these overproducing companies faced a dilemma: How do we sell all this excess?

Companies all over began at that point to launch huge advertising campaigns to try to engender in the American mindset the “Dissatisfied Consumer”, as GM vice president Charles Kettering put it. Kettering and GM were, in fact, instrumental in this mass-brainwashing, at one point stating that “the key to economic prosperity is the organized creation of dissatisfaction”. Of course by economic prosperity he meant producer prosperity. GM began to introduce yearly car models at this point to achieve this end, and it was at this point as well that advertising began to take off as a ubiquitous medium and shifted largely from logos appeal to pathos appeal. Economists like Hazel Kyrk heralded the new consumer culture as a new dawn of economic prosperity, and the new Consumption Economics school of economic thought was quick to emerge from it, and Americans conformed their buying habits from clothing to food to utilities to the whims of producers and advertisers.

But the huge productivity increases were not coupled with an increase in wages. In fact, as human capital became in large part unnecessary for much manual labor due to automation, layoffs and pay cuts were hardly uncommon. In order to absorb the overproduction, consumers had to purchase on installments and credit, a sector that mushroomed during the 1920s. The credited money flowing into the economy was in many cases not backed by actual capital, and grew to such a large portion that banks were caught by surprise when they could not produce enough capital to back the mass withdrawals that took place in 1929. The economy simply imploded from saturation with hollow credit money.

Mass-consumerism was essentially the killer of conservative economic policy. But from the comatose corpse of our laizzes-faire economy rose not a backlash against the consumerism that brought forth the situation, but instead a new form of economic policy designed to sustain and encourage the consumer mindset: Keynesian economics. The policy changes in the ensuing decade were in many ways retrospectively obvious safeguards to protect against another crash, such as requiring banks to hold a certain percentage of their recorded capital as actual capital, but in others such as social security, welfare, and unemployment benefits were designed to supplement or even replace wages in order to transform even the poorest rung of society into consumers. Even today arguments to raise the minimum wage are based on the assumption that anyone who works is entitled to consumership. In its battle with conservatism, consumerism emerged victorious with the world economy as the casualty, and survived even through the depression to become a stronger force today than ever before.

But mass consumerism, even with liberal economic policies, is not sustainable in the long run. The national debt has risen almost every year since Roosevelt’s administration and is exponentially increasing - from nearly $0 in 1932 to an astronomical $8,981,543,146,057.86 as of August 24, and will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. In the last election, dire projections were made that the government will be bankrupt by the 2030s if it continues to pay out wage supplements. Even with the debt centralized like that, the economy cannot handle an indefinite increase in national debt, yet a return to 1920 conservatism ceteris paribus would only crash the economy sooner rather than later.

The only long-term sustainable economic option without major economic restructuring is to reverse nearly a century of cultural brainwashing by producers. Severe limits and restrictions on advertising in any medium coupled with a massive propaganda campaign encouraging contentness and thrift would be the least we could do - intentional reshaping of an entire cultural mindset was done once before; it must then be done again to reverse the damage of the first.

Unfortunately, consumerism has magnified complacency to the detriment of alarm. It may just take another Great Depression to reawaken us to our own decadence.

Todd Agnew’s music has always been on the upper end of CCM’s intellectual spectrum. From the biting criticism of the postmodern Church in “My Jesus” to the Christmas story narrative of his album “Do You See What I See?”, nothing he writes can be equated to the trivial pop that pervades CCM.

The last four albums (including his first unsigned album “One Thousand Songs”, which consisted entirely of live worship) have seen Agnew transition from a youth worship leader to more and more of a singer/songwriter lambasting complacency and corruption in the Church, excepting the Christmas project which was a slight diversion from that end, and though he has never been lacking in musical talent, his real strength lies in the lyrical content. Where “Grace Like Rain” was a combination of worship and songs of personal struggle, and “Reflection Of Something” contained personal songs of a more positive nature with a few worship songs thrown in as well as the convicting “My Jesus”, “Better Questions” consists nearly entirely of songs perscriptive for the Church, with only the occasional personal and worship song.

“Prelude” begins the album’s theme of questions on an almost worrying start in saying “So I built my house on what I thought was solid ground / But I know it could be sand” - a very postmodern take on Christianity and faith in general. But fortunately, this is the last trace of doubt in the entire album: “Still Has A Hold” speaks of the inadequacy of the individual to change himself and the power of Christ necessary to that end. “Least Of These” and later “Preachers And Thieves”, though bordering on endorsement of seeker-friendly movements, still carry a valuable message that the goal of the Church is inner before outer transformation and individual conversion before self-edification.

“If You Wanted Me” is the first of the personal songs, musing in trademark somber Agnew style how he, and by implication most of his listeners, would have reacted as various Biblical characters to their situations, in each case not the desirable way, and asking God why following was made to be such a difficult road. “Our Great God” is the first worship song on the album, a classic most people would know from Mac Powell and Fernando Ortega’s rendition on the “City On A Hill” CD. Appearing with Rebecca St. James, the anthemic chorus makes this one of the musical high points of the album.

“Lovers In Our Heads” returns to the provocative string of songs and again speaks in no vague terms against the hypocritical judgments we pour on so many people while “ignoring the lovers in our beds / Our own beds in our heads”. “Peace On Earth”, though probably intentionally hyperbolic, again speaks of the hypocrisy of our racial, familial, and other divisions, and to make clear his thematic point stylistically, even brings in a rapper to complement the folksy instrumentation of the song. Though it may not sound the best to a musical ear, the point he makes is well-reinforced by the addition. “Family” later on makes the same point that since we are all family in Christ, of what importance are our differences?

Don’t Say A Word”, a warning to hold one’s tongue in light of II Corinthians 5:20 (”We are therefore ambassadors of Christ…”) is sandwiched by two personal songs exploring the Romans 7 dilemma (”The good that I wish I do not do…”): “Funny” muses how things like fish and plants can obey God around one - specifically Jonah, and then expanded to himself - who can’t, or doesn’t. On the other side is “War Inside”, Easily the strongest track musically on the album and Agnew’s heaviest to date. Driven by deep electric guitar riffs to complement Agnew’s gruff voice in a very compelling way, the song reapproaches Romans 7 from the perspective of spiritual warfare.

“Martyr’s Song” is another standout track both musically and thematically. Sung from the perspective of God welcoming to Heaven one who has died for His sake, a chorus of children makes the song irresistibly poignant in light of the theme - one markedly different from the next, “On A Corner In Memphis”. Probably one of the most difficult songs on the album, Agnew blasts the superficiality of church services in favor of a man on Beal St., who though the song doesn’t say sings for the Lord or not, is at least singing from his heart. The underlying point is one in need of making, yet it seems at points to reflect the postmodern adage that sincerity of belief matters more than content of belief, and though I’m sure this is not what Agnew intended in the song is still a dangerous philosophy to be treading around.

The album finishes off with two strong tracks, “Can I Be With You”, a poignant reflection on death and the end of things, and “Glorious Day”, the bonus track continuing that thought about what comes after death and the end of things. “Better Questions” certainly contains Agnew’s best musical tracks yet, and though as a whole it still can’t compare to “Grace Like Rain”, it certainly is deeper and more thought-provoking than anything he or arguably anyone in the CCM scene has ever released.

The teaching of the Rapture as happening prior to the Tribulation at the end of time is now a remarkably well-accepted doctrine among mainline Evangelicals for having arisen only in the last two centuries, largely stemming from the ecstatic visions of a 15-year-old Scotch-Irish girl in 1830 and the writings of Hal Lindsey, a self-proclaimed visionary who claims to have God-given insight regarding modern reinterpretations of eschatological scripture.

Hal Lindsey himself is widely regarded among Evangelicals as a crackpot, yet the doctrines made mainstream by his work pervade modern churches nonetheless. It is not hard to imagine a scenario in which a large part of the nominal church, disillusioned by the lack of a rapture upon entering the tribulation, falls away as described in II Thessalonians 2:3:

Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.
II Thessalonians 2:3 (NASB)

“Apostasy” in the KJV and several other translations here appears as “Falling Away”, exactly the sort of thing that a disillusionment would lead to. But wait! The rapture proponents have a scenario as well, in which a period of hardship comes immediately preceding the tribulation, and the church, not expecting a rapture, believes in the Antichrist who arises after this pseudo-tribulation as the second coming of Christ they have been expecting.The danger then is not necessarily in one belief or the other, but rather in which one is false. In none of the passages normally quoted to support the rapture is a distinction evident from the Second Coming and Glorious Appearing of Christ, which clearly occurs after the Tribulation so as to usher in the Millennial Reign. The separation of Christ’s return into two stages seems silly considering there is nothing in the Bible to support two separate events besides the implicit reading of Dispensationalists that the “church age” ends with the beginning of the Tribulation and so we will not suffer through it. But even in this belief, Israel was not taken out of the world when its age ended and the Church age began, but rather suffered much throughout the church age. Why is the Church then exempt from the sufferings of Israel? The idea of a “secret rapture”, or people disappearing with no explanation is even more ridiculous - based on the assumption that people would be smart enough to resist the strong delusion of II Thessalonians 2:11 if they knew it was a work of God Himself, and brought into the mainstream by the Left Behind series.

For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved, but for the sake of the elect, those days will be cut short.
Matthew 24:21-22

This verse in no unclear language states that there will be elect during the Tribulation. The Elect are defined in Ephesians 1:4 as those that God has “chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him”. One is therefore still elect before his moment of salvation: though it would seem to us that a just-saved person’s eternal destination has changed before our eyes, at no point had that person been Hellbound, God having known that the moment of salvation was in the future, and not being willing that any should perish (II Peter 3:9) would not let that soul escape into Hell. Why then would God only remove some of the elect during the Rapture? The parable of the workers in the vineyard in Matthew 20:1-16 tells us that in terms of wages (the things that happen to us at the End), believers that are hired into the Kingdom of God at a late hour receive the same reward as those who are hired early in their life. Why then would God discriminate in this manner against the late-hour workers and the early-hour workers?

The Rapture is, I believe, a teaching that has sneaked into our mainstream churches in broad daylight without the scrutiny that ought to be given new teachings like this. Certainly there are many who refute the rapture even still, but it has entered the public consciousness through the Left Behind series and through the Church’s acceptance of the theology implicit therein to the point that even unbelievers see rapture theology as a well-established tenet of the Christian faith. The fact that it is far from a settled debate needs to re-enter the public consciousness for the sake of the Church, and for the sake of the people we reach.