_  "History is cyclical. It is doomed to repeat itself."

"History is linear, with a beginning and an end."

 Which statement is true? One statement represents a secular humanist worldview and the other a biblical worldview. Do you know why?

_ In the Bible, we read that history has a beginning in the Garden of Eden and an ending, after a great battle, Satan is destroyed and there is a new heaven and a new earth. History has a starting point and an ending point. At the center of history is Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, who was born in Bethlehem, lived a sinless life, died a sacrificial death on the cross, rose again from the dead, and ascended bodily into Heaven. Though there are similarities in historical events, we realize that history is marching on to its final destination in a linear fashion.

Cosmic humanists want us to think that history is just one purposeless cycle after another. They believe that the major forces that motivate human behavior occur in cycles, or patterns. This is based on a humanist worldview.

A worldview is a perspective, or way of looking at life, based on a philosophy. A Marxist-Leninist will see everything boiling down to the "continuous battle between the bourgeois and proletariat.” A Secular Humanist sees mankind evolving to a better, more advanced condition.

My father had a pair of sunglasses with yellow lenses that I borrowed occasionally when I drove his car. Everything looked different when I was wearing those glasses. Blue cars looked green. Red cars looked orange. Sometimes I forgot that I was wearing the glasses and I would say something to someone else in the car, "Look at the green truck..."  "Mom," they would reply, "I see a blue truck, but no green truck."

Holding on to non-Biblical worldviews is like wearing glasses with tinted lenses. They color everything thing you see and make it look different. You don't even realize that a false worldview can distort reality.

_ The stores are filled with hearts, chocolate, and roses in every shade of pink and red imaginable. As a lover of pink, chocolate and roses, this just may be my favorite time of year to shop! It's St. Valentine’s Day! Yes, St. Valentine's Day--I know that sounds a little odd to your ears. When I was a little girl, that's what we called it. But in recent years, as all holidays are secularized and materialized more and more, St. Valentine's Day became Valentine's Day. 

Why Do We Celebrate?

Who was St. Valentine and why do we celebrate love on the day we've set aside to remember him?  Valentine was a priest who lived in Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius. He was known for his kindness and selfless love. He was arrested for his faith and imprisoned, but managed to send and receive letters from his friends and fellow Christian Emperor Claudius tried to convert him to Roman paganism to spare his life, but Valentine shared the Gospel with the emperor instead. Before he was martyred for his faith in Jesus, he healed the eyes of his jailor's blind daughter.  

Love is In the Air

_  In the Late Middle Ages, when courtly love and romance became the rage throughout Europe, St. Valentine's Day became associated with love and romance. Both romantic love and Christian martyrdom are things to celebrate. St.  Valentine stands in the "great cloud of witnesses," in Hebrews 12, cheering us on!  St. Valentine's Day can be celebrated in either direction, or both directions. We can celebrate the romantic love we share with our sweethearts or we can remember those who have given their lives for the Gospel of Christ.

If we are celebrating St. Valentine's Day with our sweetie, there are many options. Men, you, of course, can buy your special lady a dozen long-stemmed roses and a big box of Godiva chocolate. We can go out to a lovely dinner and gaze into each other's eyes. But, of course, those things cost money. So, what are some inexpensive ways to celebrate the romance you share with your husband? Here are some things Mike and I have done:

_ Let's finish talking about a healthy economy's cycles of growing and recessing. We talked about the first two phases, Expansion and Prosperity, last time in Up and Down, Around and Around I. Let's move on to the last two phases.

Contraction

This is a period of economic decline. Prices drop. Sales slow down, people are buying less, and families start tightening their belts. This is a time where unsuccessful businesses must make hard decisions. Inefficient business practices must change or the business could fold. Marketing practices are analyzed. New ways to improve the product are discovered.

Polly's business is struggling. She has to let two of her employees go. She gives them six months notice and allows them one day a week to look for another job. She finds a cheaper place to purchase zippers and buttons, freeing up some money to fix two of her sewing machines. She asks her employees to help her come up with improvements that will make her clothing more marketable. One of her seamstresses has an advertising idea that becomes very popular. Sales increase and she hires back the employees she had to let go. Polly made wise use of her season of contraction.

Sometimes a season of contraction happens in a business or family because they are cutting back to save for the next season of growth. Unnecessary expenses are purged and frivolous pursuits are abandoned.

In a season of contraction, production slows down or consumer spending slows down. Companies make less stuff or people buy less stuff. Unemployment rates go up as people begin to lose jobs because of a drop in their business's profits.

Interest rates might rise, or banks might just be more careful about who they lend to. Someone who is a high-risk borrower might be able to get a loan in a time of expansion, but not in a time of contraction or recession. Banks are less willing to take risks on people.

Sometimes a season of contraction is just a natural response to an artificial government-induced season of prosperity. Prices just level off. Maybe housing prices went up to a level that was more than homes are really worth. A season of contraction will bring housing prices back down to a reasonable level.

Recession

_Understanding economics is just not that difficult. If the word economics sends shivers down your spine, then review my last article Economics 101. Today we are going to talk about what a healthy economy looks like.

A healthy economy is not always growing, rather it goes through cycles of growing and recessing. This normal cycle is the result of many things, including the need for businesses and people to save money for seasons of spending. Let's look a normal economic cycle.

What factors are used to determine each stage.

• GNP (Gross Domestic Product) (How much stuff a nation is producing)
• Interest rates (How much interest banks are charging because so many people are in debt)
• Unemployment rates (How many people are out of work and how many people have jobs)
• Consumer spending (How much money people are spending)

In the Garden of Eden, Adam had a job, but it was an easy work--taking care of the garden and the animals. There was plenty to eat, a rent-free place to live, and wholesome fun to participate in for free. Since the fruit-incident, mankind must get a job and work hard to take care of needs (food, clothing, shelter) and wants (cars, phones, vacations, computers).

Over time, people have made things to sell to other people to make money to buy the things their own families need. Other people provide services to bring a paycheck home that will buy necessities. All this buying and selling, the flow of money, the cost of goods and services, and how much stuff is actually produced is called the economy. This economy ebbs and flows: expanding, booming, contracting, reccessing--the economic cycle.

For someone to make something to sell, he/she must look around and gather available resources (cloth, oranges). To this is added hard work. Polly turns cloth into clothing with sewing (work). Jennifer picks and boxes (work!) oranges to ship to customers in another state.

Expansion