SMI's 35th Anniversary issue, currently in development, will republish a piece titled "God's Will for Your Finances" by the late Larry Burkett, which initially appeared in our inaugural issue in 1990.
I had the privilege of working for Larry for many years, and I can assure you that he had a profound love for God, his fellow human beings, and his country. It was these three great loves that prompted Larry to expand beyond his work of offering personal financial advice and to start writing about the financial health of the USA.
More than three decades have passed since he wrote the bestseller The Coming Economic Earthquake. Still, the themes he sounded in that 1991 book remain as current as today's news: excessive government spending, unsustainable debt, heavy federal regulation, unaccountable bureaucracy, and inflation.
His follow-up book was What Ever Happened to the American Dream?, published in 1993. In that work, Larry gave voice to the economic concerns of many "overlooked" Americans — concerns that would eventually coalesce into a powerful political movement.
Earlier today, I spotted that book on a shelf in the SMI library and decided to re-read a bit of it. Here are a few excerpts:
Most Americans seem to believe that the government has a magical solution that, at the last moment, will stop any financial crisis and protect their way of life. I assure you, it does not! With the current attitude of spending more, taxing more, and avoiding dealing with the real problems, the situation can get a lot worse — quickly....
[I see] at least seven major problems facing our country and our economy...: debt, government regulations, litigation, a declining population base, health care costs, declining savings, and declining industry.
Some of these problems simply are not correctable. We are going to have a shortage of taxpayers to support a bulging number of retirees..... We are going to have massive health care costs to fund....
The other factors are theoretically within our means to correct, but only if real, constructive actions are taken....[Unfortunately, we] have created a situation in which solutions are theoretically possible but politically impossible.
What Larry wrote 30-plus years ago is even more salient now. Given a sharply divided Congress, an entrenched bureaucracy that resists change, activists and "special interests" that mobilize to protect their share of government largesse, and a press that more often distorts rather than reports, the idea that some things are "politically impossible" seems unassailable.
Wisdom and peace
In What Ever Happened to the American Dream?, Larry forthrightly stated his view that barring a true spiritual revival, "we are not going to solve the economic or moral problems facing our nation. To do so would require a moral fiber that is virtually non-existent in politics (and society) today."
Still, he encouraged those who follow Christ not to fret or despair. "The one certainty is that God promises wisdom and peace to those who follow Him; and we're going to need all the wisdom we can muster in the years ahead."
If Larry's comment about needing great wisdom for what may be ahead was true in 1993, surely it is all the more true in 2025.
That said, remember — as our June cover article stresses — that while economic uncertainty is always present, Scripture's timeless principles of financial management remain effective in any scenario (cf. Philippians 4:6-7).
