Economic crisis and personal morality

An article from slate.com that I thought I'd share.
Don't get depressed, It's not 1929

Here's my favorite quote:
Instead of workers with 5 o'clock shadows asking, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" we have clean-shaven financial-services executives asking congressmen if they can spare $100 billion.

It's true; there are many differences between this economic crisis and that one 80 years ago. And yet I think the commonality that has so many of us looking back to the 1930s is the sense of the unknown -- the failure of institutions that we didn't think could fail. And now gas prices have plummeted. It's just weird. It feels like something more is happening than just a plan ol' little recession. Time will tell.

Regardless, many clergy I know are saying that the crisis has motivated them to focus their churches on the things that are really important in our lives -- family, God's love, service to the needy. I have preached that, too. People are responding to that message; it's hitting home for most of us right now.

But sometimes I romanticize the Great Depression, because there are so many wonderful stories along the lines of: "we didn't have much, but we had each other!" Or stories and statistics I've heard about the genuine joy and happiness of people in third world countries, even though they live with dirt floors and water an hour's walk away. Does poverty make human beings better, more moral, and happier people? Christianity would say no: the potential to sin is always present in us, we are human.

This is also a quote from the slate article:
...wealthy Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, saw the downturn as a force for good ... "People will work harder, live more moral lives."

Eek. Easy for Andrew Mellon to say! He was one of the four richest people in America in his time.

But I sometimes long for a community where people are interconnected and share what they have, where we can find enough in very little. I think of the early Christian communities. (Acts 2):
42They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

But am I being simplistic? How does the coziness and simplicity of small, interdependent (closed?) communities (large interdependent communities, in my opinion = communism, which is beyond the scope of this blog post) compare with the freedom, creativity, and fertility of relative wealthy communities? Education, communication, pluralism, ease of travel...does it makes us better citizens of the whole world, and not just our immediate communities? (To say nothing of our ample food, sturdy shelter, clean accessible water, health care...) Am I saying the community of Acts 2 was provincial and judgmental of the outside world? Well, the Bible can be pretty judgmental of nonbelievers or those who don't conform to the immediate community. (Ananias and Sapphira, the insular Johannine community, Matthew's sheep and goats, routing out the original inhabitants of Canaan...)

I don't know. I'm still sorting it out.