Is it possible that the United States is facing and economic apocalypse great enough that it will force most Americans to fundamentally change the way we live? Unless we Americans change things ourselves the answer is almost certainly. The only real question is not whether such an economic meltdown will happen but when.

What I don't understand is why so few people in the Christian community are talking about it. Because, if I'm right, the church will be needed to play a prophetic role in the change that is coming. And I might add that I saw the last two big economic downfalls in tech investing and housing before they happened.

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As anyone in my family will tell you I'm no financial genius. But I do spend a lot of time following financial news and I've tried to live my life around the Bible. The financial news is that Americans have been living beyond our means for a long time. We've been able to do this thanks to easy credit and foreign creditors who are loaning us money to buy their products.

China, is now our largest creditor. They loan money to us by purchasing U.S. Treasury bonds so that we will buy their goods. This arrangement has allowed the material lifestyle of citizens in both countries to continually expand. The problem is that China, like any good creditor, will want to be paid back some day. Or, more likely will demand higher interested rates from the U.S. to continuing those loans. And there's another large tidal wave on the horizon. The United States is so overspent that any major series of catastrophes, say a disruption of oil from the middle east, will collapse our economy.

Our country has been playing Russian roll-et with its economy and, sooner or later, the loaded chamber is going to fire. When it does the economic meltdown will make our present economic troubles look good by comparison. American's political leaders are whistling in the wind without the will to really face this challenge. Because the real problem is not America's economic system but the mindset of the American people

Consider that the size of homes in the Unites States has doubled since World War II. Or that there is now even commercial real estate in the U.S. to house every person in this country. What was once considered a good middle class lifestyle 50 years ago, would be considered poverty today. We have confused what we need for a good life, with what we want. Worse our wants have become needs. And we have become increasingly more dependent on entertainment as a means to make our lives “livable.”

American business and government pretend we can keep moving materially forward forever. Can't happen read your Bible. We have been a country for a little over 200 years, biblical history stretches back farther than 6,000 years. The story is the same. Empires rise, empires fall. Feast followed by famine, feast followed by famine, over and over again. We are at the tail end of the longest economic expansion in history

I'm not going to blame our problems on a decline in moral values. Humanity's moral values have never been that abundant. What's different is that our technology has advanced to such a stage that we can cause more trouble for ourselves than ever before.

The downfall of our American lifestyle is not something that has happen over night. We have been descending steadily for a long time now. While easy credit has allowed us to buy more, the truth is that the vast amount of Americans have less earning power than they did 20 years ago. As the center of the nation's economic growth has shifted from goods to banks and financial services the rich got richer and the rest of us have lost a little, or a lot, of ground in our weekly paychecks.

Of course there is always the possibility that our economy could avoid a massive downsizing. An unforeseen breakthrough in technology or something else could right our sinking ship. Americans could finally agree change our lifestyles, begin living materially with less to pay off our mountains of debt, but that seems a real long hot. Being human, we Americans will only change when we little other alternative.

But what's bad news for the American economy can be very good news for Christian congregations. The mess we is in is the same mess that Jesus often warned about. The Christian faith offers real opportunity to the life of material wealth. Wealth, Jesus said is often a route away from God. And real life comes from our relationships with God and each other. As material wealth becomes something harder to maintain, the Christian faith offers a kind of wealth that, as Jesus said, doesn't rust or decay, and you don't need a bank account to have.

God may be offering the church another chance to minister in the Kingdom. Are we ready?

Monty Keeling