HIDING THE DEPLETION

The time has come to begin thinking about it. Although I am still five to seven years removed from qualifying age, the subject of Social Security keeps coming up. Sometimes I bring it up. Usually, others. It’s just par for the course for many I hang with. Invariably, when someone is contemplating when he will “go on Social Security,” he will qualify his intent with “if it doesn’t run out by then.” Way back when I began to be politically conscious, forty-plus years ago, I heard that social security was going to run out. It hasn’t. That it hasn’t serves as numbing, seemingly conclusive evidence that it never will—and I, so close to needing it, sure hope it doesn’t. Yet, as of 2020, the United States has a negative birthrate. This portends disaster for Social Security (SS). Here’s why: In 1960 the ratio of workers to beneficiaries of SS was 5 to 1. In 2005 it was 1 to 1. In 2010, 2 to 9. And, for 2020, 1 to 3. For those in Rio Linda, as Rush Limbaugh would put it, that means that in 2020 there was only one worker paying the benefits for every three SS beneficiaries. Yet, this depletion of funds is being masterfully hidden. Now, I’m not noting this about SS to disturb the elderly or to bore the young, but to make a point. It’s this: When the depletion of a resource from which one successfully and regularly draws is unknown or hidden, its recipients are lulled into a false security that the resource will always be there. Over and over, we hear, “We are having a rough time in America, but America is the greatest nation in the world. America is the freest nation in the world. America is the richest nation in the world.” All true! But, for decades, as folks have drawn on these resources of freedom, wealth, and opportunities and have received a consistent, unfailing abundance of these things, there has been an exponentially plunging depletion of these resources. And make no mistake, our liberties and opportunities and heritage are resources just as certainly as the oil in the ground and the fertile soil on top of it. Why the depletion? For the same reason there is a depletion of SS resources: The ratio is rapidly changing between those who believe the things about America that made her free, rich, and great, and those who don’t. The number of those who don’t is expanding rapidly. And, again, when the reality of the depletion is kept hidden, folks do not realize, nor are they concerned, it’s happening. They think the resource will always be there. A little analogy: Suppose, every morning you go to the refrigerator and from a pitcher pour a glass of orange juice. Today, you have no worries that tomorrow, and the next day, you will be able to do the same. You will have your glass of orange juice tomorrow. It will be there. No worries. Unless. Unless you notice that the juice in the pitcher is being depleted. If you notice that, you will be concerned and take measures that you do not run out of orange juice ensuring that tomorrow there will be enough for a glass. But, let’s say we paint the pitcher black. You wouldn’t be able to see the lowering level of juice each day through the sides of the pitcher. Oh, you say, “We could look in from the top.” Okay. Let’s put on an opaque lid. Now, you wouldn’t be able to see the depletion. Wait, you say, “I would be able to tell from the lessening heft when I lifted the pitcher from the fridge’s shelf.” Okay, let’s leave the pitcher in the refrigerator and attach it to a pivoting cradle so juice can be poured from it without lifting it. “But,” you protest, “Even just rotating the pitcher on the pivot you’d still be able to perceive its weight.” My, but you’re persistent. Okay. Let’s put a servo on the cradle and automate it. Now, push a button, and the pitcher tips in its cradle and pours orange juice into your glass. If we have completely hidden the depletion in the pitcher, we will believe that the next morning and the next morning, and the next morning, we will have our glass of orange juice. Then, one morning, we will push the button, the pitcher will tip in the cradle, and there will be no juice poured out. Make no mistake. Greater efforts are being made to hide the depletion of America’s greatest resources. We continue to draw on them fully believing tomorrow there will yet be more. We will until--until they’re all gone: Liberties. Free-markets. Democracy. Capital. All gone. The enemies of truth, reality, and freedom will have been successful. The enemies of truth and freedom will have done with America what the Darkside hackers did by shutting down the Colonial Oil Pipeline. A local resident today went to a gas pump in the Southeast where, each time in the past when he needed gas, he pumped his tank full. Today, not a drop came out of the nozzle. Thank God, there is never a depletion of the spiritual resources of God through Christ. And, I’m not hiding anything to say that. It is available what you need today. Tomorrow. Next week. A year from now. As we used to sing, “There is a river, that never shall run dry.” Jesus visited the Temple during a great celebration commemorated by a dead ritual. As the priest’s upturn pitcher emptied out and the poured-out water quickly absorbed into the ground, Jesus could take it no longer. He stood and cried: “Your pitcher is empty. Your spiritual resources are completely depleted. But come unto me and drink. Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water.” There is a resource you need never worry will be depleted. If you need it tomorrow, it won’t have run out by then. Nothing being hidden here.

HIDING THE DEPLETION

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