COST ANALYSIS & PRUDENCE 12 SEP 2014

COST ANALYSIS & PRUDENCE: their application. Here are two good examples; W.E.B. DuBois said, “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.” Christ said, “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”(A) (Unforgiveness costs us dearly. Forgiveness is economical, saving a person the cost of bitterness & revenge.) While both the Scriptures & worldly wisdom encourage prudence & cost analysis, there are plenty of examples around us that reveal that tunnel vision repeatedly prevents entire groups of people from prudence & cost analysis. This post offers some thoughts on the subject.

WISDOM FROM THE WORD OF GOD. “The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge; and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge.”(B) Christ taught, “For which of you, intending to build a tower [in context perhaps a vineyard tower which ran about 60’ high & 30’ square], does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all who see it begin to mock him…”(C) “A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.” (D) The Word encourages us to be thankful & to pray….how much does prayer & a grateful heart cost us, & what are their benefits?

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. Today, the utmost demanding difficulties facing mankind socially, economically, & politically all originate from science & technology, for instance: environmental damage, the costs of war, the population explosion, human-made pathogens & epidemics, and GMOs. But Science has been deified in many people’s minds. Lyndon LaRouche, who has a following of awake conspiracy students, advocates that technology will save mankind. (He also has been the Socialist Party’s candidate for president numerous times, & this time around supports Hillary Clinton to be president.) I often find myself incapable of awaking intelligent people to the costs of technology. One day, an intelligence man, who knew I’d been Amish, told me how stupid it was for the Amish to drive horse-drawn buggies rather than cars. I told him that there was an awful price paid for driving cars, and I enumerated a number: over 30,000 car fatalities each year since WW 2, including 54,589 people killed in cars just in 1972, which was far more deadly than all the deaths we were suffering in the Vietnam War. Americans vehemently protested the war deaths, but were totally oblivious to the larger number of dead that cars caused. And we are not even talking about all the non-vehicle casualties (bikes & pedestrians) and the injured each year. Cars have broken up communities, & made it harder for parents to control their children. They make us dependent upon the system. He shook his head & told me that these were not costs, they just happened. Then he said cars are great things, & I was wrong that these are costs. As a last resort to make my case, I brought up a sensitive pt., “You should appreciate that there are costs to using cars, your daughter was just in a terrible accident & will be maimed for life. How can you say there are no costs?” But I failed to convince him.

THE SPACE PROGRAM & GOVT. HELP TO MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS. The elite have stated in their own internal documents, that the incredibly expensive space program is designed to waste lots of money and create debt (to their advantage). I used to buy into the idea that the Science involved was valuable, not really taking an honest look at the cost of spending incredible sums of money, that we don’t have, to discover something like a crater on some asteroid. Curiosity may indeed kill the cat (by overspending). Have you noticed how a govt. will make a case that helping big international corporations is somehow enhancing the lives & wealth of its own citizens? Is anyone looking at the cost benefits, for I seriously doubt that our standard of living is helped by the govt. spending tax dollars to subsidize a multinational. The govt. is not reliable in predicting costs. The Bush administration said the Iraqi war would cost nothing, or almost nothing. Yeah right. That was right in line with their fake newscasts, which cost our nation its credibility. It’s well known about the Medicare actuary who was forced to fudge the numbers & lie to Congress to keep his job.

JEREMIAH’S DAY. In Jeremiah’s scroll (chapter 2:5-8) he writes about people going after unprofitable things. While the people of Israel had been given a bountiful land by God, they defiled it and forgot about God who had given it to them. Do we defile the gifts we have been blessed with?

OCEAN USED AS A TOILET. All my life I have watched mankind use the ocean as an enormous toilet, dumping their toxins, their garbage, their sewage, etc. on a massive scale as if there is no cost for such carelessness. On a ship returning from the Bahamas to Miami at night, I watched the crew dump large amounts of garbage for miles into the ocean. We left a trail of garbage for miles behind the cruise ship. This is standard behavior worldwide. Hello, does anyone want to wake up & count the cost?? Is it any wonder that the coast of Oregon is now a dead zone! Along the same lines, do the pilots spraying the chemtrail heavy metals consider the costs to their own country for their actions?

RUINING IT FOR EVERYONE ELSE. Have you noticed how vandals, criminals, & other uncaring people ruin it for everyone else. Some people are obviously oblivious to what they are costing others. A country like Japan, where its people are self-disciplined & not criminally minded, is able to have nice things that other nations cannot even consider, for instance, nice seats on trains, that would be defaced & carved into here in the states. The cost of maintaining large police forces weighs on everyone. Opportunities & programs that benefit society are halted because careless people abuse them. It’s become popular to use Pell grants for free cash rather than a chance to go to school. In an undisciplined society, people will shortsightedly kill the golden goose that lays the golden eggs. It’s popular in America to pride oneself on one’s lack of discipline, but there is a price to pay for it. Life is short. What do we want from it? What price must we pay for the good things of life? What price do we pay for destructive, careless, undisciplined attitudes? Wisdom has its price, but so does foolishness. The wise author of Ecclesiastes said, “Wisdom is profitable…”(E)

“For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (F) Interestingly the Apostle Paul felt that no matter what the cost, it was all worth it to have the knowledge of Christ and the hope of the resurrection in his life. He testified, “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. But indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ…for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness…but that which is from God by faith…if by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”(G) Hmmm.

(A) MK 11:25 (B)PRV 18:15 (C) LK 14:28-29 (D) PRV 22:3 (E) ECCL 10:10b (F) MT 16:26, MK 8:36, LK 9:25 (G) PHLP 3:7-11