Exodus 20:3 ³  Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

 “I grew up thinking the world was good and kind

As of late I put that fantasy behind,

But my shattered dreams haven’t left me cold and blue

I don’t need another rock I’ve got you.”

 If you are like me, you have probably thought of  Exodus 20:3 “Thou shall have no other God’s before me,” as the finger-pointing mandate of a big angry God, who was daring me to run off and have pleasure and success with anybody but Him.  But what  if Exodus 20:3 was not just a command but also a prediction, a promise of sorts?  What if He was saying, you can try, but ultimately there will be no other gods before Me; they will all fail?  If God is love, then He would only stop me from chasing another god because that other god would ultimately fail me.

Today, I started thinking about the words to my “not so big”, biggest hit, “No Other Rock,”  as I contemplated a rather depressing article by Sean Mcelwee.  The article was entitled, “Marx Was Right.”  The article went on to list 5 things that Marx said about capitalism that to one degree or another have come true.

1. The Great Recession (Capitalism’s Chaotic Nature)

The great American economy was built on debt.  The only way to really keep the American dream alive was to find more and more people who could make payments with interest.  This is what fueled the prime mortgage bust.  When lenders couldn’t find enough qualified lenders, they fabricated them.  I don’t think that’s what the founding fathers imagined.  In the end godless capitalism is no more a savior than godless Communism.

 2. The iPhone 5S (Imaginary Appetites)

A big part of our present economy is build on these phantom needs that we have created.  Do you really need an iPhone 5s to replace your iPhone 5?   A big segment of our economy needs you to have this imaginary need.   What happens when we just can’t improve the phone any more?  Imaginary needs eventually have a saturation point.

3. The IMF (The Globalization of Capitalism)

In order for manufacturing to continue to grow, we need more and more markets to export our goods to.   After a while, other countries get into the act and they need markets.  The truth is, there’s not enough markets for everybody to have a piece of the pie.

4. Walmart (Monopoly)

Today, mom-and-pop shops have been replaced by enormous big-box stores like Walmart, small community banks have been replaced by global banks like J.P. Morgan Chase and small farmers are being replaced by big corporate conglomerates like Archer Daniel Midland.   These large corporations are essentially like totalitarian governments that dictate the lives and lifestyles of billions of people.

5. Low Wages, Big Profits (The Reserve Army of Industrial Labor)

Capitalists, of course, wish to pay as little as possible for labor, so high unemployment actually empowers the large players since workers have to hang on to their jobs, lest they join the long employment lines.  Today, we live in a world of both unheard-of wealth and abject poverty, where the richest 85 people have more wealth than the poorest 3 billion.  Shame on us for such a statistic.

Of course, Karl Marx had no solutions and Communism was, in my opinion, far more oppressive and exploitive that capitalism could ever be.  The reason Marx had no solutions was because there is only one, and athiestic socialism won’t acknowledge him. “Thou shall have no other God’s before me.”

Well, is there any hope you might ask?  Well, what about this for a hypothesis? There never was any hope that man could create lasting utopia without God. I am not a socialist and if we could remove greed and corruption, I think capitalism could work.  In fact of all the economic policies; I think capitalism is the best.  My point is that mankind’s best efforts fall short of the glory of God.  Even the God democratic free enterprise has failed to live up to its promises, leaving the God of  Abraham, Isaac & Jacob in first place … again.