Joel Osteen and the Glory Story: A Case Study

by Michael S. Horton, Ph.D.
This article is a part of a collection of essays written recently by Dr. Horton after his interview on 60 Minutes which aired on October 14, 2007.

"Name it, claim it"; the "health-and-wealth" or "prosperity gospel" : these are nicknames
for a heresy that in many respects is only an extreme version of perhaps the most typical focus of American Christianity today more generally. Basically, God is there for you and
your happiness. He has some rules and principles for getting what you want out of life and if you follow them, you can have what you want. Just "declare it" and prosperity will come to you. (1) God as Personal Shopper.

Although explicit proponents of the so-called "prosperity gospel" may be fewer than their influence suggests, its big names and best-selling authors (T. D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, and Joyce Meyer) are purveyors of a pagan worldview with a peculiarly American flavor. It's basically what the sixteenth century German monk turned church reformer Martin Luther called the "theology of glory": How can I climb the ladder and attain the glory here and now that God has actually promised for us after a life of suffering? The contrast is the "theology of the cross": the story of God's merciful descent to us, at great personal cost, a message that the Apostle Paul acknowledged was offensive and "foolish to Greeks."

Joel Osteen: Another Verse of a Really Long Song
The attraction of Americans to this version of the "glory story" is evident in the astonishing success of Joel Osteen's runaway best-seller, Your Best Life Now: Seven Steps to Living at Your Full Potential. Beyond his charming personality and folksy style, Osteen's phenomenal attraction is no doubt related to his simple and soothing sampler of the American gospel: a blend of Christian and cultural elements that he picked up not through any formal training, but as the son of a Baptist-turned-prosperity evangelist who was a favorite on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). However, gone are the eccentric caricatures of "prosperity" televangelism, with its flamboyant style and over-the-top rhetoric.

In the Wal-Mart era of religion and spirituality, every particular creed and any denominational distinctives get watered down. We don't hear (at least explicitly) about our being "little gods," "part and parcel of God," or the blood of Christ as a talisman for healing and prosperity. The strange teachings of his father's generation, still regularly heard on TBN, are not explored in any depth. In fact, nothing is explored in any depth. Osteen still uses the telltale lingo of the health-and-wealth evangelists: "Declare it," "speak it," "claim it," and so forth, but there are no dramatic, made-for-TV healing lines. The pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, TX, which now owns the Compaq Center, does not come across as a flashy evangelist with jets and yachts, but as a charming next-door-neighbor who always has something nice to say.

Although remarkably gifted at the social psychology of television, Joel Osteen is hardly unique. In fact, his explicit drumbeat of prosperity (word-faith) teaching is communicated in the terms and the ambiance that might be difficult to distinguish from most megachurches. Joel Osteen is the next generation of the health-and-wealth gospel. This time, it's mainstream.

As community philosopher Karl Marx said of a consumer-driven culture, "All that is solid melts into the air." Religion, too, becomes a commodity—a product or therapy that we can buy and use for our personal well-being. Exemplifying the moralistic and therapeutic approach to religion, Osteen's message is also a good example of the inability of Boomers to mourn in the face of God's judgment or dance under the liberating news of God's saving mercy. In other words, all gravity is lost—both the gravity of our problem and of God's amazing grace. According to this message, we are not helpless sinners—the ungodly—who need a one-sided divine rescue. (Americans, but especially we Boomers, don't take bad news well.) Rather, we are good people who just need a little instruction and motivation.

"Law-Lite": Salvation From Unhappiness By Doing Your Best
There is no condemnation in Osteen's message for failing to fulfill God's righteous law. On the other hand, there is no justification. Instead of either message, there is an upbeat moralism that is somewhere in the middle: Do your best, follow the instructions I give you, and God will make your life successful. "Don't sit back passively," he warns, but with a gentle pleading suggests that the only reason we need to follow his advice is because it's useful for getting what we want. God is a buddy or partner who exists primarily to make sure we are happy. "You do your part, and God will do his part." (2) "Sure we have our faults," he says, but "the good news is, God loves us anyway." (3) Instead of accepting God's just verdict on our own righteousness and fleeing to Christ for justification, Osteen counsels readers simply to reject guilt and condemnation.(4) Yet it is hard to do that successfully when God's favor and blessing on my life depend entirely on how well I can put his commands to work. "If you will simply obey his commands, He will change things in your favor."(5) That's all: "…simply obey his commands."

Everything depends on us, but it's easy. One wonders if he has ever had a crisis of doubt or moral failure that stripped him naked in God's presence. Osteen seems to think that we are basically good people and God has a very easy way for us to save ourselves—not from his judgment, but from our lack of success in life—with his help. "God is keeping a record of every good deed you've ever done," he says—as if this is good news. "In your time of need, because of your generosity, God will move heaven and earth to make sure you are taken care of." (6)

It may be "Law Lite," but make no mistake about it: behind a smiling Boomer Evangelicalism that eschews any talk of God's wrath, there is a determination to assimilate the gospel to law, an announcement of victory to a call to be victorious, indicatives to imperatives, good news to good advice. The bad news may not be as bad as it used to be, but the good news is just a softer version of the bad news: Do more. But this time, it's easy! And if you fail, don't worry. God just wants you to do your best. He'll take care of the rest.

So who needs Christ? At least, who needs Christ as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (Jn 1:29)? The sting of the law may be taken out of the message, but that only means that the gospel has become a less demanding, more encouraging law whose exhortations are only meant to make us happy, not to measure us against God's holiness.

So while many supporters offer testimonials to his kinder, gentler version of Christianity than the legalistic scolding of their youth, the only real difference is that God's rules or principles are easier and it's all about happiness here and now, not being reconciled to a holy God who saves us from ourselves. In its therapeutic milieu, sin is failing to live up to our potential, not falling short of God's glory. We need to believe in ourselves and the wages of such "sins" is missing out on our best life now. But it's still a constant stream of exhortation, demands, and burdens: follow my steps and I guarantee your life will be blessed.

A TIME story in 2006 observed that Osteen's success has reached even more traditional Protestant circles, citing the example of a Lutheran church that followed Your Best Life Now during Lent, of all times, "when," as the writer notes, "Jesus was having his worst life then." Even churches formally steeped in a theology of the cross succumb to theologies of glory in the environment of popular American spirituality. We are swimming in a sea of narcissistic moralism: an "easy-listening" version of salvation by self-help.

This is what we might call the false gospel of "God-Loves-You-Anyway." There's no need for Christ as our mediator, since God is never quite as holy and we are never quite as morally perverse as to require nothing short of Christ's death in our place. God is our buddy. He just wants us to be happy, and the Bible gives us the roadmap.

I have no reason to doubt the sincere motivation to reach non-Christians with a relevant message. My concern, however, is that the way this message comes out actually trivializes the faith at its best and contradicts it at its worst. In a way, it sounds like atheism: Imagine there is no heaven above us or hell below us, no necessary expectation that Christ "will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead" and establish perfect peace in the world. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find anything in this message that would be offensive to a Unitarian, Buddhist, or cultural Christians who are used to a diet of gospel-as-American-Dream. Disney's Jiminy Cricket expresses this sentiment: "If you wish upon a star, all your dreams will come true."

To be clear, I'm not saying that it is atheism, but that it sounds oddly like it in this sense: that it is so bound to a this-worldly focus that we really do not hear anything about God himself—his character and works in creation, redemption, or the resurrection of the body and the age to come. Nothing in the past (namely, Christ's work) nor in the future (namely, Christ's return in judgment, raising our bodies in everlasting life) really matters. Maybe I haven't heard enough of his talks on TV, but I have never heard anything that approached a proclamation of any article mentioned in the Apostles' Creed. Despite the cut-aways of an enthralled audience with Bibles opened, I have yet to hear a single biblical passage actually preached. Is it possible to have evangelism without the evangel? Christian outreach without a Christian message?

If God matters, it is for the most trivial concerns—or at least those quite secondary to the real crisis that the gospel addresses. One could easily come away from this type of message concluding that we are not saved by Christ's objective work for us, but by our subjective "personal relationship with Jesus" through a series of works that we perform to secure his favor and blessing. God has set up all of these laws and now it's up to us to follow them so that we can be blessed. I can think of no better illustration of what sociologist Christian Smith has identified as "moralistic, therapeutic deism": the gospel of American Religion.

As the New Testament repeatedly affirms, those who want to be saved by their own obedience need to know that God doesn't grade on a curve. His record-keeping is bad news, not good news, unless Christ's obedient record has been credited to us through faith alone. God's law says, "If you want to be saved by your own effort, here are the terms: Do all these things and you'll go to heaven; fail to do them and you'll go to hell." The revivalists of yesteryear came up with their own list, but it was basically the same threat: "Do or die." The kinder, gentler version is, "Try harder and you'll be happier; fail to do them and you'll lose out on God's best for your life here and now." No heaven, no hell; no condemnation or salvation; no perfect obedience of Christ credited to us: Just do your best. Remember, God is keeping score! Christ becomes totally unnecessary in this message.

Osteen reflects the broader assumption among evangelicals that we are saved by making a decision to have a personal relationship with God. If one's greatest problem is loneliness, the good news is that Jesus is a reliable friend. If the big problem is anxiety, Jesus will calm us down. Jesus is the glue that holds our marriages and families together, gives us purpose for us to strive toward, wisdom for daily life. And there are half-truths in all of these pleas, but they never really bring hearers face to face with their real problem: that they stand naked and ashamed before a holy God and can only be acceptably clothed in his presence by being clothed, head to toe, in Christ's righteousness.

This gospel of "submission," "commitment," "decision," and "having a personal relationship with God" fails to realize, first of all, that everyone has a personal relationship with God already: either as a condemned criminal standing before a righteous judge or as a justified co-heir with Christ and adopted child of the Father. "How can I be right with God?" is no longer a question when my happiness rather than God's holiness is the main issue. My concern is that Joel Osteen is simply the latest in a long line of self-help evangelists who appeal to the native American obsession with pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Salvation is not a matter of divine rescue from the judgment that is coming on the world, but a matter of self-improvement in order to have your best life now.


Footnotes

1 This position is extensively documented in Michael Horton, ed., The Agony of Deceit (Chicago: Moody Press, 1990) [back to text]

2 Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now: Seven Steps to Living at Your Full Potential (NY: Warner Books, 2004),41-42 [back to text]

3 Ibid., 57 [back to text]

4 Ibid., 66 [back to text]

5 Ibid., 119 [back to text]

6 Ibid., 262 [back to text]

The Importance of Hell

There are plenty of people today who don't believe in the Bible's teaching on everlasting punishment, even those who do find it an unreal and a remote concept.

by Tim Keller

In 2003 a research group discovered 64% of Americans expect to go to heaven when they die, but less than 1% think they might go to hell. Not only are there plenty of people today who don't believe in the Bible's teaching on everlasting punishment, even those who do find it an unreal and a remote concept. Nevertheless, it is a very important part of the Christian faith, for several reasons.

1. It is important because Jesus taught about it more than all other Biblical authors put together. Jesus speaks of "eternal fire and punishment" as the final abode of the angels and human beings who have rejected God (Matthew 25:41,46) He says that those who give into sin will be in danger of the "fire of hell" (Matthew 5:22; 18:8-9.) The word Jesus uses for 'hell' is Gehenna, a valley in which piles of garbage were daily burned as well as the corpses of those without families who could bury them. In Mark 9:43 Jesus speaks of a person going to "hell [gehenna], where 'their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.' " Jesus is referring to the maggots that live in the corpses on the garbage heap. When all the flesh is consumed, the maggots die. Jesus is saying, however, that the spiritual decomposition of hell never ends, and that is why 'their worm does not die.'

If Jesus, the Lord of Love and Author of Grace spoke about hell more often, and in a more vivid, blood-curdling manner than anyone else, it must be a crucial truth.

In Matthew 10:28 Jesus says, "Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell." He is speaking to disciples, some of whom will eventually be tortured, sawn in half, flayed and burned alive. Yet, he says, that is a picnic compared to hell. Clearly, for Jesus hell was a real place, since he said that after judgment day people would experience it in their bodies. Hell is a place not only of physical but also of spiritual misery.

Jesus constantly depicted hell as painful fire and "outer darkness" (Matt 25:30; cf. Jude 6,7,13,) a place of unimaginably terrible misery and unhappiness. If Jesus, the Lord of Love and Author of Grace spoke about hell more often, and in a more vivid, blood-curdling manner than anyone else, it must be a crucial truth. But why was it so important to Jesus?

2. It is important because it shows how infinitely dependent we are on God for everything. Virtually all commentators and theologians believe that the Biblical images of fire and outer darkness are metaphorical. (Since souls are in hell right now, without bodies, how could the fire be literal, physical fire?) Even Jonathan Edwards pointed out that the Biblical language for hell was symbolic, but, he added, 'when metaphors are used in Scripture about spiritual things . . . they fall short of the literal truth." (from "The Torments of Hell are Exceeding Great" in volume 14 of the Yale edition of Edwards works.) To say that the Scriptural image of hell-fire is not wholly literal is of no comfort whatsoever. The reality will be far worse than the image. What, then, are the 'fire' and 'darkness' symbols for? They are vivid ways to describe what happens when we lose the presence of God. Darkness refers to the isolation, and fire to the disintegration of being separated from God. Away from the favor and face of God, we literally, horrifically, and endlessly fall apart.

In the teaching of Jesus the ultimate condemnation from the mouth of God is 'depart from me.' That is remarkable--to simply be away from God is the worst thing that can happen to us! Why? We were originally created to walk in God's immediate presence (Genesis 2.) In one sense, of course, God is everywhere and upholds everything. Only in him do we all speak and move and have our being (Acts 17:28.) In that sense, then, it is impossible to depart from the Lord; even hell cannot exist unless God upholds it. But the Bible says sin excludes us from God's 'face' (Isaiah 59:2.) All the life, joy, love, strength, and meaning we have looked for and longed for is found in his face (Psalm 16:11)-that is, in his favor, presence, fellowship, and pleasure.

Sin removes us from that aspect of his power that sustains and supports us. It is to us as water is to a fish-away from it our life slowly ebbs away. That is what has been happening to us throughout history. That is why, for Paul, the everlasting fire and destruction of hell is 'exclusion from the presence of the Lord." (2 Thessalonians 1:9.) Separation from God and his blessings forever is the reality to which all the symbols point. For example, when Jesus speaks being 'destroyed' in hell, the word used is apollumi, meaning not to be annihilated out of existence but to be 'totaled' and ruined so as to be useless for its intended purpose.

The image of 'gehenna' and 'maggots' means decomposition. Once a body is dead it loses its beauty and strength and coherence, it begins to break into its constituent parts, to stink and to disintegrate. So what is a 'totaled' human soul? It does not cease to exist, but rather becomes completely incapable of all the things a human soul is for--reasoning, feeling, choosing, giving or receiving love or joy. Why? Because the human soul was built for worshipping and enjoying the true God, and all truly human life flows from that. In this world, all of humanity, even those who have turned away from God, still are supported by 'kindly providences' or 'common grace' (Acts 14:16-17; Psalm 104:10-30; James 1:17) keeping us still capable of wisdom, love, joy, and goodness. But when we lose God's supportive presence all together, the result is hell.

3. It is important because it unveils the seriousness and danger of living life for yourself. In Romans 1-2 Paul explains that God, in his wrath against those who reject him, 'gives them up' to the sinful passions of their hearts. Commentators (cf. Douglas Moo) point out that this cannot mean God impels people to sin, since in Ephesians 4:19 it is said that sinners give themselves up to their sinful desires. It means that the worst (and fairest) punishment God can give a person is to allow them their sinful hearts' deepest desire.

What is that? The desire of the sinful human heart is for independence. We want to choose and go our own way (Isaiah 53:6.) This is no idle 'wandering from the path.' As Jeremiah puts it, 'No one repents . . . each pursues his own course like a horse charging into battle. (8:6)' (We want to get away from God-but, as we have seen, this is the very thing that is most destructive to us. Cain is warned not to sin because sin is slavery. (Genesis 4:7; John 8:34.) It destroys your ability to choose, love, enjoy. Sin also brings blindness-the more you reject the truth about God the more incapable you are of perceiving any truth about yourself or the world (Isaiah 29:9-10; Romans 1:21.)

What is hell, then? It is God actively giving us up to what we have freely chosen-to go our own way, be our own "the master of our fate, the captain of our soul," to get away from him and his control. It is God banishing us to regions we have desperately tried to get into all our lives. J.I.Packer writes: "Scripture sees hell as self-chosen . . . [H]ell appears as God's gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose, either to be with God forever, worshipping him, or without God forever, worshipping themselves." (J.I.Packer, Concise Theology p.262-263.) If the thing you most want is to worship God in the beauty of his holiness, then that is what you will get (Ps 96:9-13.) If the thing you most want is to be your own master, then the holiness of God will become an agony, and the presence of God a terror you will flee forever (Rev 6:16; cf. Is 6:1-6.)

Why is this so extremely important to stress in our preaching and teaching today? The idea of hell is implausible to people because they see it as unfair that infinite punishment would be meted out for comparably minor, finite false steps (like not embracing Christianity.) Also, almost no one knows anyone (including themselves) that seem to be bad enough to merit hell. But the Biblical teaching on hell answers both of these objections. First, it tells us that people only get in the afterlife what they have most wanted-either to have God as Savior and Master or to be their own Saviors and Masters. Secondly, it tells us that hell is a natural consequence. Even in this world it is clear that self-centeredness rather than God-centeredness makes you miserable and blind. The more self-centered, self-absorbed, self-pitying, and self-justifying people are, the more breakdowns occur, relationally, psychologically, and even physically. They also go deeper into denial about the source of their problems.

On the other hand, a soul that has decided to center its life on God and his glory moves toward increasing joy and wholeness. We can see both of these 'trajectories' even in this life. But if, as the Bible teaches, our souls will go on forever, then just imagine where these two kinds of souls will be in a billion years. Hell is simply one's freely chosen path going on forever. We wanted to get away from God, and God, in his infinite justice, sends us where we wanted to go.

In the parable of Luke 16:19ff, Jesus tells us of a rich man who goes to hell and who is now in torment and horrible thirst because of the fire (v.24) But there are interesting insights into what is going on in his soul. He urges Abraham to send a messenger to go and warn his still-living brothers about the reality of hell. Commentators have pointed out that this is not a gesture of compassion, but rather an effort at blame-shifting. He is saying that he did not have a chance, he did not have adequate information to avoid hell. That is clearly his point, because Abraham says forcefully that people in this life have been well-informed through the Scriptures. It is intriguing to find exactly what we would expect-even knowing he is in hell and knowing God has sent him there, he is deeply in denial, angry at God, unable to admit that it was a just decision, wishing he could be less miserable (v.24) but in no way willing to repent or seek the presence of God.

I believe one of the reasons the Bible tells us about hell is so it can act like 'smelling salts' about the true danger and seriousness of even minor sins. However, I've found that only stressing the symbols of hell (fire and darkness) in preaching rather than going into what the symbols refer to (eternal, spiritual decomposition) actually prevents modern people from finding hell a deterrent. Some years ago I remember a man who said that talk about the fires of hell simply didn't scare him, it seemed too far-fetched, even silly. So I read him lines from C.S. Lewis:

Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others . . . but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.

To my surprise he got very quiet and said, "Now that scares me to death." He almost immediately began to see that hell was a) perfectly fair and just, and b) something that he realized he might be headed for if he didn't change. If we really want skeptics and non-believers to be properly frightened by hell, we cannot simply repeat over and over that 'hell is a place of fire.' We must go deeper into the realities that the Biblical images represent. When we do so, we will find that even secular people can be affected.

We run from the presence of God and therefore God actively gives us up to our desire (Romans 1:24, 26.) Hell is therefore a prison in which the doors are first locked from the inside by us and therefore are locked from the outside by God (Luke 16:26.) Every indication is that those doors continue to stay forever barred from the inside. Though every knee and tongue in hell knows that Jesus is Lord (Philippians 2:10-11,) no one can seek or want that Lordship without the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3.This is why we can say that no one goes to hell who does not choose both to go and to stay there. What could be more fair than that?

4. The doctrine of hell is important because it is the only way to know how much Jesus loved us and how much he did for us. In Matthew 10:28 Jesus says that no physical destruction can be compared with the spiritual destruction of hell, of losing the presence of God. But this is exactly what happened to Jesus on the cross-he was forsaken by the Father (Matthew 27:46.) In Luke 16:24 the rich man in hell is desperately thirsty (v.24) and on the cross Jesus said "I thirst" (John 19:28.) The water of life, the presence of God, was taken from him. The point is this. Unless we come to grips with this "terrible" doctrine, we will never even begin to understand the depths of what Jesus did for us on the cross. His body was being destroyed in the worst possible way, but that was a flea bite compared to what was happening to his soul. When he cried out that his God had forsaken him he was experiencing hell itself. But consider--if our debt for sin is so great that it is never paid off there, but our hell stretches on for eternity, then what are we to conclude from the fact that Jesus said the payment was "finished" (John 19:30) after only three hours? We learn that what he felt on the cross was far worse and deeper than all of our deserved hells put together.

And this makes emotional sense when we consider the relationship he lost. If a mild acquaintance denounces you and rejects you--that hurts. If a good friend does the same--that hurts far worse. However, if your spouse walks out on you saying, "I never want to see you again," that is far more devastating still. The longer, deeper, and more intimate the relationship, the more tortuous is any separation. But the Son's relationship with the Father was beginningless and infinitely greater than the most intimate and passionate human relationship. When Jesus was cut off from God he went into the deepest pit and most powerful furnace, beyond all imagining. He experienced the full wrath of the Father. And he did it voluntarily, for us.

Fairly often I meet people who say, "I have a personal relationship with a loving God, and yet I don't believe in Jesus Christ at all." Why, I ask? "My God is too loving to pour out infinite suffering on anyone for sin." But this shows a deep misunderstanding of both God and the cross. On the cross, God HIMSELF, incarnated as Jesus, took the punishment. He didn't visit it on a third party, however willing.

So the question becomes: what did it cost your kind of god to love us and embrace us? What did he endure in order to receive us? Where did this god agonize, cry out, and where were his nails and thorns? The only answer is: "I don't think that was necessary." But then ironically, in our effort to make God more loving, we have made him less loving. His love, in the end, needed to take no action. It was sentimentality, not love at all. The worship of a god like this will be at most impersonal, cognitive, and ethical. There will be no joyful self-abandonment, no humble boldness, no constant sense of wonder. We could not sing to him "love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all." Only through the cross could our separation from God be removed, and we will spend all eternity loving and praising God for what he has done (Rev 5:9-14.)

And if Jesus did not experience hell itself for us, then we ourselves are devalued. In Isaiah, we are told, "The results of his suffering he shall see, and shall be satisfied" (Isaiah 53:11). This is a stupendous thought. Jesus suffered infinitely more than any human soul in eternal hell, yet he looks at us and says, "It was worth it." What could make us feel more loved and valued than that? The Savior presented in the gospel waded through hell itself rather than lose us, and no other savior ever depicted has loved us at such a cost.

Conclusion The doctrine of hell is crucial-without it we can't understand our complete dependence on God, the character and danger of even the smallest sins, and the true scope of the costly love of Jesus. Nevertheless, it is possible to stress the doctrine of hell in unwise ways. Many, for fear of doctrinal compromise, want to put all the emphasis on God's active judgment, and none on the self-chosen character of hell. Ironically, as we have seen, this unBiblical imbalance often makes it less of a deterrent to non-believers rather than more of one. And some can preach hell in such a way that people reform their lives only out of a self-interested fear of avoiding consequences, not out of love and loyalty to the one who embraced and experienced hell in our place. The distinction between those two motives is all-important. The first creates a moralist, the second a born-again believer.

We must come to grips with the fact that Jesus said more about hell than Daniel, Isaiah, Paul, John, Peter put together. Before we dismiss this, we have to realize we are saying to Jesus, the pre-eminent teacher of love and grace in history, "I am less barbaric than you, Jesus--I am more compassionate and wiser than you." Surely that should give us pause! Indeed, upon reflection, it is because of the doctrine of judgment and hell that Jesus' proclamations of grace and love are so astounding.

Mr. Burd Goes to Washington

It's Steve Burd's eighth or ninth trip to Capitol Hill this year -- he can't quite remember. Sitting in a hotel lobby late last week, what the busy Safeway CEO does know is that by the end of this trip, he'll have told all 100 U.S. senators his company's health-care story. That alone might deserve applause.

As most of corporate America sits on the health-care sidelines -- issuing vague statements, trying not to offend a new U.S. president -- Mr. Burd has charged into the political debate. "I'm here because health-care simply isn't a partisan issue," he says. There is what works, and what doesn't. "I'm genuinely concerned someone might try to solve this by nationalizing health care, at the moment we at Safeway have proven that it is the market that reins in costs."

Prove it, he can. As recently as 2004, Safeway was suffocating under health-care costs growing at 10% a year. Mr. Burd, who had long been intellectually and politically drawn to the health-care issue, decided it was time to hit the restart button. He blew up the company's existing health-care structure and replaced it with one that embodied market principles -- choice, responsibility, competition and price.

Getty Images

Steve Burd (R), president and CEO of Safeway, testifies before Congress.

Today, Safeway has accomplished what Washington claims is the goal: The company's per-capita health-care expenses have remained flat, compared to the near 40% increase experienced by the rest of corporate America over the past four years. This has not been done by cutting care or shifting costs to employees. Nearly 80% of the 30,000 nonunion Safeway workers who take part in the program rate it good, very good, or excellent.

Magic? Not even. Mr. Burd explains that the "cure for today's ills is simply removing the obstacles to a free health-care market."

The Safeway plan has two main parts that work in tandem. The first involves giving employees a financial stake in the system. Safeway demolished the traditional PPOs and HMOs that encourage consumers to be cavalier about costs. The company today fully pays for an array of primary and preventive visits and tests. But beyond that, employees have skin in the game. The company deposits $1,000 each year into a "health reimbursement account," which workers can use to pay for care. The next $1,000 in expenses is the employee's responsibility. After that, employees pay 20% of costs up to a $4,000 maximum.

Safeway workers these days treat that first $1,000 carefully, since anything beyond it comes out of their pockets. The company is alive with stories of people who no longer visit the emergency room for routine care but instead call around to doctors to ask prices, and swap information with colleagues. Safeway is doing its part to improve price transparency, by having its care administrator, Cigna, analyze claims information. One discovery was that within 30 minutes of its California headquarters routine colonoscopy prices ranged from $700 to $7,000. By the end of the year, employees will be able to go on a Web site, punch in a zip code, and get a list of providers and costs.

The second part of Safeway's plan was an embrace of the obvious: Healthy people cost less. Mr. Burd notes that 75% of health-care costs are the result of four conditions -- cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. The majority of these are preventable. "Obesity in this country went from 18% to 40% in 20 years -- this is not genetics, this is behavior," he explains. He says that an obese employee can require 10 times the number of doctor visits in a year than someone of healthy weight.

The result was Safeway's "Healthy Measures" program, which is voluntary. Employees are tested for smoking, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol. Every area they "pass" results in a reduction in their premium, of as much as $1,560 for a family, a year. Those who fail but prove progress can get refunds. Safeway complements this with an intense culture of health: weight-loss tips, fitness competitions and smoking cessation programs.

Critics of price incentives argue that they pressure consumers to forego necessary care. Mr. Burd counters that Healthy Measures and the company's free preventive care -- designed to catch problems before they become expensive -- have in fact resulted in a healthier work force. Safeway's smoking and obesity rates are roughly 70% the national average. The program has even been cautiously greeted by Safeway's union leaders, who understand that soaring health costs are eating into union wages.

When I ask Mr. Burd what he hopes to accomplish here, he is blunt that one goal is to prevent a "public option" that would only "piggyback on the experience of Medicare." It's a "Trojan Horse" that will steer people to government and ultimately squeeze out innovative programs like his.

He's also working to ensure that any health-care bill contains provisions that would replicate or encourage Safeway's success. That includes changing current law so that he can offer even steeper premium discounts for good behavior. It also includes his idea to make available Medicare's vast database of providers and costs so Americans can shop around. An optimist, Mr. Burd says he's had "extraordinary receptivity" from both sides of the aisle.

As for his fellow CEOs, Mr. Burd is eager to debate anyone who thinks he will escape costs by dumping health care on the government. Business will still be taxed to pay for the program, making the U.S. less competitive. Far better, says Mr. Burd, for companies to control their destiny, and prove markets can also work for health care. We're about to find out if Washington will let them.

Write to kim@wsj.com

Market-based solutions can reduce the national health-care bill by 40%.

By STEVEN A. BURD

Effective health-care reform must meet two objectives: 1) It must secure coverage for all Americans, and 2) it must dramatically lower the cost of health care. Health-care spending has outpaced the rise in all other consumer spending by nearly a factor of three since 1980, increasing to 18% of GDP in 2009 from 9% of GDP. This disturbing trend will not change regardless of who pays these costs -- government or the private sector -- unless we can find a way to improve the health of our citizens. Failure to do so will make American companies less competitive in the global marketplace, increase taxes, and undermine our economy.

At Safeway we believe that well-designed health-care reform, utilizing market-based solutions, can ultimately reduce our nation's health-care bill by 40%. The key to achieving these savings is health-care plans that reward healthy behavior. As a self-insured employer, Safeway designed just such a plan in 2005 and has made continuous improvements each year. The results have been remarkable. During this four-year period, we have kept our per capita health-care costs flat (that includes both the employee and the employer portion), while most American companies' costs have increased 38% over the same four years.

Martin Kozlowski

Safeway's plan capitalizes on two key insights gained in 2005. The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior. The second insight, which is well understood by the providers of health care, is that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable.

As much as we would like to take credit for being a health-care innovator, Safeway has done nothing more than borrow from the well-tested automobile insurance model. For decades, driving behavior has been correlated with accident risk and has therefore translated into premium differences among drivers. Stated somewhat differently, the auto-insurance industry has long recognized the role of personal responsibility. As a result, bad behaviors (like speeding, tickets for failure to follow the rules of the road, and frequency of accidents) are considered when establishing insurance premiums. Bad driver premiums are not subsidized by the good driver premiums.

As with most employers, Safeway's employees pay a portion of their own health care through premiums, co-pays and deductibles. The big difference between Safeway and most employers is that we have pronounced differences in premiums that reflect each covered member's behaviors. Our plan utilizes a provision in the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that permits employers to differentiate premiums based on behaviors. Currently we are focused on tobacco usage, healthy weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Safeway's Healthy Measures program is completely voluntary and currently covers 74% of the insured nonunion work force. Employees are tested for the four measures cited above and receive premium discounts off a "base level" premium for each test they pass. Data is collected by outside parties and not shared with company management. If they pass all four tests, annual premiums are reduced $780 for individuals and $1,560 for families. Should they fail any or all tests, they can be tested again in 12 months. If they pass or have made appropriate progress on something like obesity, the company provides a refund equal to the premium differences established at the beginning of the plan year.

At Safeway, we are building a culture of health and fitness. The numbers speak for themselves. Our obesity and smoking rates are roughly 70% of the national average and our health-care costs for four years have been held constant. When surveyed, 78% of our employees rated our plan good, very good or excellent. In addition, 76% asked for more financial incentives to reward healthy behaviors. We have heard from dozens of employees who lost weight, lowered their blood-pressure and cholesterol levels, and are enjoying better health because of this program. Many discovered for the first time that they have high blood pressure, and others have been told by their doctor that they have added years to their life.

Today, we are constrained by current laws from increasing these incentives. We reward plan members $312 per year for not using tobacco, yet the annual cost of insuring a tobacco user is $1,400. Reform legislation needs to raise the federal legal limits so that incentives can better match the true incremental benefit of not engaging in these unhealthy behaviors. If these limits are appropriately increased, I am confident Safeway's per capita health-care costs will decline for at least another five years as our work force becomes healthier.

The Healthy Measures program currently applies only to our nonunion work force. While we have numerous health and wellness provisions in our union contracts, we are working with union leaders like Joe Hansen of the United Food and Commercial Workers to incorporate healthy measures provisions in our union work force as well.

While comprehensive health-care reform needs to address a number of other key issues, we believe that personal responsibility and financial incentives are the path to a healthier America. By our calculation, if the nation had adopted our approach in 2005, the nation's direct health-care bill would be $550 billion less than it is today. This is almost four times the $150 billion that most experts estimate to be the cost of covering today's 47 million uninsured. The implication is that we can achieve health-care reform with universal coverage and declining per capita health-care costs.

There is a very real possibility that we will see positive transformational health-care reform in the near future. I am encouraged by the effort I see on Capitol Hill, particularly the bipartisan effort in the Senate. While some tough issues remain, if we continue to work in a bipartisan manner I believe we will resolve these issues successfully and find agreement on meaningful reform.

Mr. Burd is CEO of Safeway Inc., and the founder of the Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform.

Obama’s New Liberal Realism

President Obama has largely drawn praise for his tepid response to the mass uprisings in Iran challenging the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In general, Obama has offered three justifications for his tentativeness — and they have strangely been accepted by his supporters, who almost immediately evolved in lockstep from liberal Wilsonians to hardcore realists.

Here are Obama’s three justifications:

1. Given the historical record of U.S. intervention in Iran, we do not wish either to perpetuate that shameful record, or to hang on the necks of the dissidents the smelly albatross of U.S. support.

2. We don’t know which side will emerge triumphant. Supporting losers in the street will only antagonize the Ahmadinejad regime and render Obama’s ongoing diplomatic overtures null and void.

3. There is not much difference anyway between the agendas of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those of his challengers, led by Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh. No matter who wins, Iran will still have an overtly anti-American government bent on acquiring nuclear weapons. Why then incur further hostility for a response that would bring no advantage anyway?

There are a number of things wrong with all this — well aside from the strange spectacle of seeing once-fervent liberal critics of old-style Kissingerian realism suddenly espousing Barack Obama’s kinder, gentler version of it.

1. The coup that unseated Mohammad Mossadeq was in 1953 — nearly six decades ago. Its details are still controversial: the proportional degree of CIA intervention compared to that of the British, the role of fundamentalist clerics in the opposition, the degree to which Mossadeq himself entertained authoritarian measures, and so on. What Kermit Roosevelt Jr. did or did not do as the CIA officer in charge, what were the actual intentions of the Mossadeq government in the Soviet-American Cold War rivalry — all of that is all now in the distant past.

Blaming America for undermining Mossadeq but not blaming it for later undermining the Shah is about as logical as claiming we must hold the current generations of Japanese accountable for Pearl Harbor, or that German actions in World War II permanently warped the American psyche, or that the Chinese Communists’ butchering thousands of Americans in Korea must be held against current generations of Chinese. At some point, all nations, big and small, need to get a life and move on. Of course, when one rushes in and blabbers out apologies without context, then one becomes a prisoner of those past actions — we are to be sorry about Iran then and so must be sorry ever after.

Iran, remember, has no such reluctance about meddling. It endorsed Bush in the 2004 presidential race — to the delight of the Kerry campaign. For six years, it has tried to murder Americans in Iraq and destabilize the Iraqi democracy. It has killed Americans in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and done its best to thwart democratic government in Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Iraq. How odd that Iranian theocrats have no worries about violently overthrowing democracy abroad, while we are terrified of supporting democracy by words alone.

Criticizing the Ahmadinejad government for its election fraud and its response to peaceful demonstrations is not synonymous with crudely egging on street demonstrations. Reagan found a way to voice support for the Polish resistance to Soviet thuggery. Kennedy made sure that the Berliners knew that we believed they were right and the Soviet-sponsored East German Communists wrong.

In contrast, Ford’s calculated snub of Solzhenitsyn brought no gratitude from the Soviets, but plenty of shame to America. The elder Bush’s allegiance to Gorbachev over Yeltsin was finally embarrassing, and was rendered obsolete almost before it was embraced. To the extent that George W. Bush spoke out against autocracy in the Gulf and Egypt, he was to be praised, and some liberalization followed; but to the extent that he grew quiet in his second term, we were branded as hypocrites for supporting freedom in Iraq but not elsewhere in the Arab world.

Support for the reformers can be framed in terms of shared criticism of what we and they oppose, rather than clumsy cheering for their own agenda.

2. Voicing careful and wise support for the challenge to Ahmadinejad’s thuggery can influence events. That’s why the European Union is well ahead of us in its condemnation of the Iranian election fraud and subsequent crackdown.

Ahmadinejad is going to blame the U.S. whatever it does. He rightly sized up the new administration and realized there is now an American government that will apologize for the CIA’s actions in 1953, but not ask Iran to apologize for its deplorable record in Iraq from 2003 to 2009. So it is a one-way street with Iran, and it’s better to be damned for voicing criticism than for being afraid to voice criticism.

The Iranian theocrats are realists par excellence; they do not give a damn about ideals or morality, and will deal with us in the future on their perception of their own self-interest: whether or not we “meddle” now, if they find it useful to talk in the future, they will; if they find it of no value to talk in the future, they won’t.

3. Obama’s third assumption makes even less sense than the first two. Mousavi may be a past supporter of Khomeinism, as are ostensibly all Iranian politicians. But he is not on a moral or even a practical par with Ahmadinejad. He has already voiced criticism of Holocaust denial, and has called for freer expression and communication, and for liberalization of Iranian theocratic law. In other words, he is a type of multicultural “other” who is a rational opponent of U.S. policy, but whom Obama actually could court.

Furthermore, the crowds seem already to have transcended Mousavi, seeing in him more a tool than a totem, hoping that his election would lead to far more liberalization than even he intended. One of the reasons Gorbachev was welcomed by Reagan was that he began to initiate change that would soon render Gorbachev himself obsolete. The same may well be true with Mousavi.

In conclusion, we are seeing a new multicultural realism in American foreign policy — the result of a number of currents in our popular culture. We do not judge the authoritarian “other” in the same way in which we judge authoritarian conservatives abroad who ape Westernism.

There is also a weird sort of multicultural fantasy about cleric-ruled Iran, fueled by the non-Western dress of its elites, the constant evocation of 1953 (ironically by fundamentalists whose forefathers approved of Mossadeq’s removal), and its serial Hollywood-like denunciation of America. Ahmadinejad brilliantly ties into the Che effect, which makes his blood-curdling remarks about Israel’s end about as disturbing to American public opinion as the fact that Che himself was a cold-blooded killer who executed the innocent with his own hands. Add it all up and we get a reprise of Bill Clinton at Davos in 2005 gushing on about Iranian democracy and its progressives, as if a rigged plebiscite overseen by a group of unshaven dictators in Nehru-like coats is somehow neat.

Iraq explains a lot — and provides the greatest irony of all. We wish not to meddle in Iran in order to encourage real democracy there, but we accept Iranian meddling intended to destroy Iraqi democracy. We reach out to the Shiite thug Ahmadinejad in Iran, but not to the Shiite moderate Maliki in Iraq. We feel so guilty about promoting Iraqi democracy that we won’t aid its budding counterpart in nearby Iran. We are so wedded to the canard that the removal of Saddam removed the counterweight to Iran and empowered the clerics that we cannot see the existence of Iraqi democracy as a great catalyst to the democratic forces in Iran, undermining the theocracy more with words than Iran could undermine the Iraqi democracy with guns.

Then, of course, there is Obama and his quest for a global messianic rather than an American presidential role. So far it pays to be Hamas and the Palestine Authority rather than Israel, Chávez rather than Uribe, Ahmadinejad rather than Maliki, Putin rather than an Eastern European elected prime minister, a Turkish Islamist rather than a Greek elected prime minister. The former all gain attention by their hostility, the latter earn neglect by their moderation and generally pro-American views. Praising Islam abroad is a lot more catchy than praising democracy — one boldly inspires Bush’s critics, the other sheepishly dovetails with Bush’s agenda. All that, in varying degrees, also explains the troubling neglect of the Iranians in the street.

One mystery remains: Does Obama do this because the squeaky problem gets the attention, or does he really empathize with the tired anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist refrain of those who used to be considered hostile?

Our Historically Challenged President

Understanding the Age of Obama

Are you confused by all that has changed since President Barack Obama took office in January? If so, you're not alone. Perhaps, though, this handy guide to Age of Obama "logic" might be of some assistance.

1. The Budget. Wanting to cut $17 billion from the budget, as President Obama has promised, is proof of financial responsibility. Borrowing $1.84 trillion this year for new programs is "stimulus." The old phrase "out-of-control spending" is inoperative.

2. Unemployment. The number of jobs theoretically saved, or created, by new government policies - not the actual percentage of Americans out of work, or the total number of jobs lost - is now the far better indicator of unemployment.

3. The Private Sector. Nationalizing much of the auto and financial industries, while regulating executive compensation, is an indication of our new government's repeatedly stated reluctance to interfere in the private sector.

4. Race and Gender. Not what is said but who says it and about whom reveals racism and sexism. For example, an Hispanic female judge isn't being offensive if she states that Latinas are inherently better judges than white males.

5. Random violence. Some assassinations represent larger American pathologies, but others do not. When a crazed lone gunman murders someone outside the Holocaust Museum or shoots an abortion doctor, we should worry about growing right-wing and Christian extremism. But when an African-American Muslim convert brags about his murder of a military recruitment officer or an Islamic group plots to kill Jews and blow up a military jet, these are largely isolated incidents without larger relevance.

6. Terrorism. Acts of terror disappeared about six months ago. Thankfully, we live now in an age where there will be - in the new vocabulary of the Obama administration - only occasional "overseas contingency operations" in which we may be forced to hold a few "detainees." At the same time, ongoing military tribunals, renditions, wiretaps, phone intercepts and predator-drone assassinations are no longer threats to the Constitution. And just saying you're going to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay is proof that it is almost closed.

7. Iraq. The once-despised Iraq war thankfully ended around Jan. 20, 2009, and has now transformed into a noble experiment that is fanning winds of change throughout the Middle East. There will be no need for any more Hollywood cinema exposés of American wartime crimes in Iraq with titles like "Rendition," "Redacted," "Lions for Lambs" and "Stop-Loss."

8. The West. Western values and history aren't apparently that special or unique. As President Obama told the world during his recent speech in Cairo, the Renaissance and Enlightenment were, in fact, fueled by a brilliant Islamic culture, responsible for landmark discoveries in mathematics, science and medicine. Slavery in America ended without violence. Mistreatment of women and religious intolerance in the Middle East have comparable parallels in America.

9. Media. The media are disinterested and professional observers of the present administration. When television anchormen and senior magazine editors bow to the president, proclaim him a god or feel tingling in the legs when he speaks, it is quite normal.

10. George W. Bush. Former President Bush did all sorts of bad things to the United States that only now we are learning will take at least eight years to sort out. "Bush did it" for the next decade will continue to explain the growing unemployment rate, the most recent deficit, the new round of tensions with Iran and North Korea, and the growing global unrest from the Middle East to South America.

Once we remember and accept the logic of the above, then almost everything about this Age of Obama begins to make perfect sense.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

Inc: Who are the five most influential entrepreneurs of the past 30 years?

Bono

Bono is illustrative of the broadening role in society for entrepreneurs. Through his organization, ONE, he has helped to persuade governments to forgive $100 billion worth of debt. Like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, he has used his expertise, his fame, and his contacts to make some truly impressive gains.

Bono - a case for the defence

The latest issue of The Word magazine has a picture of Bono on the cover, with the headline ‘Superstar saviour or sanctimonious git? Bono On Trial: A WORD investigation.’

Of course, it is no such thing. An investigation would suggest a genuine issue and a serious journalistic attempt to get to the bottom of it. It is just an attention grabbing headline yolking together some skimpy reminiscences of encounters with the rock star by Word magazine regulars, some axe grinding by familiar Bono bashers and a bit of ranting diatribe by a couple of obscure freelancers who presumably glad of the soap box. With well rehearsed anecdotes U2 watchers will have heard many times before, we learn, well, that Bono is short (its amazing the number of journalists who mention this, as if size explains everything, from Napoleon and Hitler’s desire to conquer Europe to Prince’s musical drive and Tom Cruise’s box office clout. It’s the pygmy theory of megalomania, of which anyone less than 5′ 8″ is automatically suspected), that he is extremely charming, driven and ambitious and that some people don’t like him. Eammon Forde (who he?) doesn’t like him because Bono ruined his teenage years, apparently, by being in a successful Irish band in the 80s when Eammon would have rather there had been a different successful Irish band . Hmm. I think we all have a band like that in our teenage subconscious, Eammon. “Get over it,” is the usual adult response. Hazel Davis (who she?) says he can’t really sing, but then uses nothing to support this apart from insults (she doesn’t tell us which rock singers she thinks can “sing”, or why “singing” matters, and where, say, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Pete Doherty fit in her particular scale of measuring vocal accomplishment. I have a soul loving amigo who pretty much thinks no rock vocalists can sing, but at least he puts up a structured argument). Dave Marsh (now, I have come across him, because the complete failure of celebrity politics is one of his hobby horses, which he can argue cogently and passionately, although he doesn’t really get into it here, instead trading in insults and trotting out one hugely controversial survival-of-the-fittest African economist, Dambisa Moyo, to support his vague assertion that “Africans” complain Bono speaks for them without so much as asking their permission). Laura Barton concludes this 9 page feature with a kind of vague concern that Bono’s politicking may be driven more by narcissism than philanthropy. She’s not sure, mind you. It’s just a bit of a nagging notion. Now, I really like Laura’s writing about music because she approaches her subjects in an original, poetic, emotional, almost touchy-feely fashion, but as a witness for the prosecution she’s about as damning as Mr Magoo at an identity parade. And that’s about it. If only all trials were conducted in such a random, anecdotal and highly opinionated fashion, with so little recourse to the facts, and no opportunity to answer back.

Now I like Word magazine, and I like the people who make it, but they should be embarrassed about this. It reeks of something cobbled together at the last minute because they didn’t have a suitably heavyweight cover star. The fact that they thought it was a good idea is indicative of the place Bono now occupies in popular culture.

At the height of Live8’s ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign, some wags made a bit of money on the side with a ‘Make Bono History’ t-shirt. For some, Bono is the greatest rock star of our times, to be celebrated as much for his idealism as his music. For others he is an insufferable bore, preaching about how we should live our lives. Perhaps more than any other rock star, he has become a divisive, love him or hate him figure. It is something of which he is well aware. “I’m sick of Bono,” is his standard line. “And I am him.”

It is no secret where I stand on this. I ghosted U2’s autobiography. I have known Bono a long time, and followed his band since my schooldays but every time I mention his name the anti-Bono brigade start sniping at me. I can be accused (and regularly am) of bias and even sycophancy yet I consider myself lucky to have had a front row seat at the gestation of one of the defining rock bands of our times, and I am sure I would feel the same way if it had been The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Smiths, Nirvana or Oasis. In terms of ticket and album sales, U2 are up there with the biggest bands of all time. In terms of cultural impact, their influence is all over modern rock, from the scale and imagination of their live presentation to the sonic tapestry of Edge’s guitars and producer Brian Eno’s synths. Many of the most popular rock bands of the moment (Coldplay, Kings of Leon and The Killers, amongst others) are unabashed in their devotion to U2, yet arguably their real influence is not so much musical as ideological. It is about commitment and passion, the notion that a band can stay together for thirty years or more with a work ethic that pushes them to forge music that is relevant, engaging with the pop charts and the wider world too.

Yet it is for the latter that Bono, in particular, is held in contempt. The roots of Bono’s activism lie in his Christian faith, the sense that he has to give something back in order to justify the privileges of his success. He is accused of asking people to dip into their own pockets when he lives a millionaire lifestyle but, in fact, his principal approach is to lobby for political change rather than call for charity. Behind the spotlights, his personal charitable commitments are significant, and critics might be surprised at the relatively modest scale of his family lifestyle. Indeed, his real engagement with Africa started when Bono and his wife did voluntary work at an Ethiopian orphanage during the 1985 famine, where he witnessed despair and heroism that left an indelible impression upon him. Bono acts because he is compelled to.

I have seen what he puts into this, how it possesses him, what it means to him, and the accusations of dilettantism or narcissism are so far wide of the mark as to be laughable. Is there ego involved? Of course, it would be absurd to pretend otherwise. Ego is part of the job description, it’s a necessary force to get someone on stage in front of a rock band in the first place. But it takes more than ego to put in the office hours that Bono does (at least two days a week, even when his full time job in U2 is in full swing). And the ego is reigned in by a palpable humility, a sense of being in service to others, his strong feeling that this is the price his God (not mine, by the way) asks of him in return for all the good things that have happened in his life. You can ask questions, as Dave Marsh regularly does, of the point of celebrity politicking, but the answers lie not in fatuous opinion about motivation, they lie in the math of investment and policy change. There are plenty of figures publicly available, particularly with regard to third world countries who have had billion dollar debts cancelled and have been able to put that money to work in health and education. If you are interested, you might take a look at Data co-founder Jamie Drummond’s comprehensive answer in 2007 to pernicious questions posed by Financial Times journalist Gideon Rachman, which I have copied here. Bono’s organisations, Data and Red work within an umbrella of established aid groups, and I don’t hear them complaining about his involvement. Bottom line, I always think, is that there are people around today, educated and healthy, who wouldn’t have been alive without his energy and commitment to their cause. He is putting in his own time and energy in an effort to make a difference. What exactly is the problem? That he annoys you?

I often hear people suggest that Bono would make his life easier if he wasn’t so in your face, constantly turning up in photo shoots with politicians and other wealthy movers and shakers, but that is his role as a lobbyist, his particular deal with the devil. He wants to get his organisations, packed with highly regarded economists and aid experts, an audience at the highest table, and the price he pays for that is to be the celebrity in the flashbulb, to submit to the photo op.

To ask Bono to reign himself in would be to go against his nature and dilute his impact. Back in the early days of U2 he created two characters to act out onstage, the Fool and the Boy. Only the latter made it onto record (in the songs for U2’s debut album, Boy) but the fool has often been called into service nonetheless. Bono is an optimistic, over enthusiastic, energetic character not afraid (as many in his profession are) of being too cool to make an idiot of himself (which is one reason the criticism of him is so ineffective, Bono has a thick skin). As the lead singer in a band, he considers it his job to jump around and make a big noise, to bang a drum, draw attention, fly a flag (sometimes literally), rally for the cause. He wants to make a difference and so he uses the best tool at his disposal: his fame, his passion, his talent. It is what makes him such a powerful irritant: he is in your ear (and the ears of world leaders) buzzing away, getting his message across.

The same spirit that drives Bono onstage drives U2 in the studio. And ultimately, politics is secondary, because without the music no one would be paying attention. While many of their contemporaries have either retired or retreated to a comfort zone of nostalgic hits, U2 constantly strive to create new work to rival their best, and in the process have had a run of sustained creativity and popularity that sets the bar for everyone in rock and roll (as to recent reports that their new album has been a flop, it currently stands at over three and a half million sales worldwide, not bad going in a peer 2 peer download era. And the tour hasn’t even started yet). Love them or hate them, Bono and U2 will be history when they no longer make music that engages our attention.

I am not suggesting Word are wrong to ask questions of Bono. But what, really, is the question? How about what kind of rock stars do we want? Idealists driven by passionate belief, who stand up to be counted, who try to make a difference, and who espouse the same ideals in their life as in their music? Colourful characters whose imaginative participation in the hurly burly of the world makes pop culture more interesting? Compassionate human beings who feel beholden to give something back for the immense privileges they receive? Or shallow self-interested showbusiness celebrities who never stick their heads above the political parapets for fear that it will get shot off?

There are plenty of the latter, you can see them on magazine covers every day. There is only one Bono. And I’ve got a question for Word and all the other Bono critics who seem to be so offended by his existence. What does it say about them, that the rock star they would put on trial is the one who is making the most effort to do some good in the world?

NMC

Bikers take a 'Revolutionary Ramble' around Morris; Event raises money for local rescue squads

STAFF PHOTO: ELBALIZ MENDEZ

Jessica Giorgianni, who works in Parsippany, attaches her name tag to the back of her bicycle before the Revolutionary Ramble Bicycle Tour that started in Madison on Saturday.

More than 500 bicyclists christened the first Revolutionary Ramble on Saturday and traveled varying routes around Morris County to raise money for 13 local emergency rescue squads.

"There were some good hills," Jerry Keselman, 53, of Warren, said after finishing the 62-mile course in four hours. "I'm trying to get some hills in, and there were some hills here I didn't expect."

Keselman, like many riders, was training for another event. In his case, he said he's going to partake in a ride through Death Valley in October to benefit juvenile diabetes.

The Morris Area Freewheelers riding group organized the event, which saw roughly 550 participants, ride director Jim Hunt said.

"We are absolutely thrilled ... with the volunteer support we've had for this ride," Hunt said.

Entry fees ranged from $30 to $40, depending on when people registered. Those who signed up for the 62-mile loop left at 8 a.m. The 40-miler participants departed at 9 a.m., and the 25-milers left at 10 a.m. The last group, which rode 12 miles to Washington's Headquarters in Morristown, left at 10:30 a.m.

Hunt said he wouldn't know how much the ramble raised for emergency rescue squads until the money was tallied.

The Ramble rambled on rain or shine, and Saturday brought both. However, depending on the route the bikers took and the positioning of the clouds, they either got drenched or stayed dry.

"It wasn't raining where I was — I could have used some rain," Keselman said.

New Providence residents Krina Griffin, 43, and Jennifer Zimmerman, 45, took the 40-mile route and got drenched.

Both said rain doesn't just get the riders wet, it saturates the road, pushing debris to the sides of the street where bikers ride, which results in many flat tires.

"You avoid it as much as you can," Zimmerman said. However, they weren't so lucky.

"We each had two," Zimmerman said of flat tires.

Despite that, both women said they loved the event.

"It was a challenging ride, it was a good ride," Griffin said.

"The way it was organized was phenomenal," Zimmerman said, adding routes, paths, and directional signs all were clearly marked.

People from Rhode Island, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Missouri, Maryland, Florida and Connecticut took part.

"We got caught in the rain but it was a great ride," Rockaway resident Mike O'Hara, 52, said of the 12-mile course he rode with his 13-year-old son, Brendan O'Hara.

Both said it was their first ride and that the rain wasn't a problem.

"It's just another part of the experience," Brendan O'Hara said.

Matt Manochio: 973-428-6627; mmanochi@gannett.com

Bicycle Dreams

There Is No 'Paradox of Thrift'

Frightened by tough economic times, formerly spendthrift Americans are beginning to save. But the shift is causing alarm among some economists and commentators. Prudent savers, say these writers, are exemplars of the "paradox of thrift," which holds that the practice of thrift, while seemingly wise and rational for the individual, can be harmful for society.

So it is that a Wall Street Journal headline warned: "Hard-Hit Families Finally Start Saving, Aggravating Nation's Economic Woes." A story in the New York Times said the "re-emergence of thrift as a value" presents a serious problem: "Economists call it the Paradox of Thrift." Another Times piece cautioned: "Putting away money and paying down debt may be good for one family's kitchen-table economics, but the broader economy suffers in the short term when millions of families do it." Nobel Prize- winning economist and syndicated Times columnist Paul Krugman regularly beats this drum. And a recent Newsweek cover, evoking World War II recruitment posters, featured a stern-looking Uncle Sam pointing at the reader with the patriotic appeal: "I Want YOU to Start Spending!"

In the 20th century, the paradox of thrift found its greatest champion in John Maynard Keynes. In his Treatise on Money (1930), Keynes argued that "mere abstinence is not enough by itself to build cities or drain fens." It is enterprise that builds. "If Enterprise is afoot," he explained, "wealth accumulates whatever may be happening to Thrift; and if Enterprise is asleep, wealth decays whatever Thrift may be doing. Thus, Thrift may be the handmaiden of Enterprise. But equally she may not. And, perhaps, even usually she is not."

In 1931, in a radio address to the British people on how to fight back against the oncoming Great Depression, Keynes was more vehement about the futility of saving and the wisdom of spending. Sometimes, he said, saving one's money was "quite right," but at other times, including the present one, saving was "utterly harmful and misguided." He bluntly warned his fellow citizens: "The best guess I can make is whenever you save five shillings, you put a man out of work for a day." He concluded with an Uncle Sam-like appeal to patriotism:

Therefore, O patriotic housewives, sally out tomorrow early into the streets and go to the wonderful sales which are everywhere advertised. You will do yourselves good .  .  . [and you will] have the added joy that you are increasing employment, adding to the wealth of the country because you are setting on foot useful activities, bringing a chance and a hope to Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Belfast.

When writing for policymakers and economists, Keynes and his followers spelled out this idea in more formal terms. They posited that whenever a nation's desire to save exceeds productive investment, the result is a savings glut. The excess savings, because they are not smoothly turned into investments, are effectively quarantined from normal economic life, much as if the savers had hidden their money under the floorboards. This phenomenon in turn can help trigger a downward economic spiral, a sort of negative feedback loop in which reduced consumer spending causes greater unemployment, and greater unemployment reduces spending, and so on. In the end, everyone--including the well-meaning chap who saved his five shillings in the first place--comes out poorer.

Finally, periods of economic downturn, when people's natural concern for the future may cause them to try to save more, are precisely the periods in which savings gluts can do the most damage to society, by deepening rather than counteracting the downward turn in the business cycle.

Ever since Keynes, the proposition that thrift can be paradoxical has been widely accepted. It made its way into the best-known economics textbook of the second half of the 20th century, Economics by Paul A. Samuelson and (in later editions) William Nordhaus. Not only does it continue to influence each generation of policymakers and commentators, but among the general public, the notion is widespread that, in order to keep the economy growing, citizens have a duty, whatever else may happen, to keep on spending.

But is it true? Is there actually something paradoxical about thrift that can make it more a curse than a blessing for society? Here, in ascending level of importance, are five reasons why, in fact, there is no paradox of thrift.

5. Saved money is likely to be productive money.

It is actually possible to save too much. Anyone who is denying his children adequate food or medicine or endangering his own health in order to allocate more to savings is almost certainly saving too much.

As a group, however, Americans have never been at serious risk of oversaving. Over the past eight decades, the personal savings rate in the United States--the difference between earnings and expenditures--averaged about 7 percent. It reached about 11 percent in the early 1980s and then began a long, steep decline. By the time the nation entered the 21st century overleveraged and in debt, the personal savings rate had sunk to zero or below.

In recent months, as the economic horizon has rapidly darkened, the U.S. personal savings rate has soared. Last week the Commerce Department reported it at 5.7 percent, according to the Associated Press. By the end of the year, according to some economists, it may reach 7 or 8 percent. In other words, if they are right, by 2010 Americans may be saving at about the same rate that we've averaged since 1930.

No one would call this dangerous oversaving. On the contrary, even the current modest increase in the savings rate is good for families and the nation. The reason is simple: Savings--money diverted from consumption--are the only source of money for productive investment, and productive investment is the lifeblood of the economy.

By the same token, economists overwhelmingly agree that a high-debt, zero-saving society is one that has put itself at long-term risk. For a time, it may be possible to live the high life on borrowed money. Having other nations largely finance our ever-growing debts may allow us to kick the can down the road while continuing to shop as if there were no tomorrow.

But it's ultimately unsustainable. Over time, a thriving economy and a successful society require citizens who are willing and able to save for the future, and this fundamental fact will not change.

The "savings glut" described by Keynes and others, when the desire to save overwhelms our willingness to invest, may be a theoretical danger, but the weight of evidence suggests that it is not happening today in the United States.

The banking and finance crisis of recent months--which may already be easing--appears at least to some degree to have unnaturally frozen the flow of credit. And there appears to be a hesitancy among many investors. But no one is seriously suggesting that this problem could be solved by returning to the practice of shopping with money we don't have. After all, if that were the solution, there would never have been a crisis in the first place.

According to most analysts, the root of our financial crisis is enormously large, interlocking, and ultimately toxic structures of debt. And if piled-up consumer debt is part of the problem, running up still more consumer debt can hardly be the solution.

In fact, the solution lies in the opposite direction. An 8 or 9 percent personal savings rate in 2010, allowing households to reduce their debt and begin to live within their means, might actually ameliorate the banking crisis, insofar as it would once again position millions of Americans to become investors and wealth-builders over the long run.

More broadly, if we bracket for a moment the immediate and probably short-term failures in our banking system and take a longer view, the danger of a genuine American savings glut--savings in excess of productive investment--appears to be all but nonexistent.

Fundamentally, our economy is wide open and extremely dynamic. We value, and frequently reward, risk-taking and entrepreneurialism. Stand on any American Main Street and you can hardly throw a brick without hitting someone who is itching to start a business, make a new product, try out an idea, risk all to follow a dream. People around the world admire us (and occasionally despise us), and some of them end up coming here, for precisely these reasons. It is unlikely, under any reasonably foreseeable circumstances, that this deep-rooted American characteristic will disappear, or turn into its opposite, such that we suddenly have too many saved dollars chasing too few new challenges and new ideas. In America, saved money typically is productive money.

4. For individuals and families, it's always wise to live within your means.

Consider a 27-year-old woman from Missouri, a graduate of a community college, working as a sales representative for a big greeting card company. She is recently married. Her husband also works in corporate sales. Their annual income is $84,000. They have no children, but hope to start a family soon. And owning a home is one of their dreams.

They eat out a lot. They enjoy travel. Between them, they have five credit cards, with a balance of about $11,500. (A year ago, the unpaid balance was $9,000.) Some months, they try to pay down some of the principal, but for most of the past year, they paid only the minimum. Also, the husband still owes about $16,000 on his student loans. Sometimes, when an unexpected expense arises, his wife borrows money from her parents. Usually she pays them back, but not always. Together, the couple have about $700 in the bank.

Plainly, these two are spending too much. They have good jobs, a reasonable income, and no children, yet they are spending nearly every penny they have on short-term consumption, while slipping further into debt. If this pattern is projected even a few years into the future, they are almost surely looking at a painful financial crisis.

Then suppose the economy turns sour. Their companies are laying off workers and cutting back. The couple both still have their jobs, but they're worried.

As a result, they begin to make changes. The nice vacation they were planning--with the expenses to go on their credit cards--is now on hold. They try to eat out less, to cut back on entertainment, to be more careful with their dollars generally. They are being more responsible--but are they hurting their society by helping themselves in this way? Are they failing to consider, in the economic sphere, their patriotic duty?

It's hard to see how that could be the case. Indeed, most young couples are likely to feel much better about their chances of building a nest if they first build a nest egg. Once people begin to live within their means, moreover, all kinds of productive and pro-social things are likely to happen.

First and foremost, they become richer. That is the purpose of thrift. Not coincidentally, the most beloved and frequently quoted book on thrift in the history of the world, written by Benjamin Franklin, is entitled The Way to Wealth. It's almost a mathematical certainty that if people practice thrift over time--and avoid getting struck by lightning or run over by a truck--they will get richer. In all likelihood, they will get significantly richer.

Second, such savers are actually likely to spend more than people mired in debt. Couples who practice thrift and build wealth over time have more assets and savings, which in turn become productive investments, which in turn promote economic growth and development. Such thrifty couples also tend to pay more taxes. This whole dynamic is good for families and for their society. In fact, if the goal is more stimulative spending, thrift is the main way to get there.

So Americans who are now taking steps to get their financial house in order are not the problem for a troubled economy. They are the solution. No one should chastise them on the grounds that society paradoxically benefits from their overindebtedness. On the contrary, everyone should cheer their newfound thrift and hope that living within one's means becomes prevalent.

3. Governments, not individuals or families, are responsible for any deficit spending needed to moderate economic downturns.

It is true that a sudden drop in consumer spending--that is, in the demand for goods and services--can lead to unemployment, worsening an economic downturn. And in this situation, wise policymakers may wish to engage in deficit spending in order to stimulate demand, boost employment, and generally moderate the effects of the downturn. But this isn't a paradox.

Neoclassical economic theory has long taught that, in a downturn, government may properly engage in deficit spending, just as, in boom years, a wise government builds up a surplus. Keynes himself contributed to this idea. One happy result of this economic model is a balanced budget over the course of the business cycle. Another is a moderating of highs and lows. Just as calculated doses of fiscal restraint help keep the economy from overheating during upturns, so calculated doses of fiscal excess help moderate the effects and duration of downturns.

One can only wish that the Bush administration had respected these norms, instead of blithely running huge budget deficits throughout the recent go-go years. And one can only pray that now, as we confront the worst economic downturn in decades, the far larger deficits planned by the Obama administration are the right amount of federal deficit spending.

But whatever else may be true of deficit spending during downturns, the job must necessarily fall to governments. It makes no sense, from either the individual's or the society's point of view, to urge already over-indebted citizens and families to do anything other than start living within their means, so as to begin building wealth, instead of only consuming and borrowing.

Furthermore, it is far more efficient for the government to borrow than the individual. The U.S. government can borrow money to cover its deficit spending at an interest rate of 2 or 3 percent--a fraction of the 20 percent or more that families pay on credit card debt.

Then, there is what the economist Mancur Olson called the logic of collective action. There are some goals which, even when favored by all as individuals, cannot be achieved through individual action. For example, if one shopkeeper in a big, dirty city stops throwing his garbage into the street, he can have only a slight impact on the overall problem. And if he pays for private garbage removal, his costs will go up while his neighbors' costs remain constant, a development that could ultimately threaten his livelihood. The only real solution is for all the shopkeepers at once to change their behavior. There are many other illustrations of the logic of collective action, and deficit spending to stimulate the economy is one of them.

If, in the spirit of Keynes's famous appeal, a patriotic housewife sallies forth to serve her country by maxing out another credit card, she is like the shopkeeper. Her splurge will hardly affect total consumer spending, though it will make her and her family worse off. Which is why today's patriotic but intelligent housewife will instead sally over to a savings bank or credit union and make a deposit--an action that will almost certainly make her and her family better off and, by helping her move from dependent debtor to independent saver and investor, be good for society.

For these reasons, priming the economic pump in the short term must be done collectively, through the actions of government, instead of individually, through the private overspending of citizens and households. This concept is completely consistent with the thrift ethic, and there is nothing paradoxical about it.

2. Assuming that there is a paradox of thrift encourages waste.

The story is told that Keynes, in a fancy washroom at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington in 1934, instead of taking a single towel to dry his hands, dramatically pushed the entire pile of clean towels to the floor and crumpled them, explaining to his listeners that this way of using towels would do more to reduce unemployment and stimulate the economy than using a single towel.

The story may be apocryphal, but it captures the essence of the alleged paradox of thrift. In this view, it is "Enterprise" that generates wealth--regardless, as Keynes put it, of "whatever may be happening to Thrift." Accordingly, if tossing clean towels onto a dirty floor will generate a bit more "Enterprise" among underemployed hotel workers, then by all means start tossing, and thrift be damned, since it is inactivity that constitutes the ultimate danger. The values traditionally associated with thrift--carefulness, conservation--become a sideshow at best and do harm at worst.

At the center of this argument is the unethical and finally counterproductive encouragement of waste. A great weakness not only of the critique of thrift, but also of much economic analysis, is the dubious claim that every dollar spent on economic "Enterprise" is the equivalent of every other dollar spent on it.

But there is no such equivalence. A dollar spent on bottled water is clearly not as good--not as productive, as wise, as helpful to society--as a dollar spent on a tap water purifier. A dollar spent on a lottery ticket is not as good as a dollar spent on a DVD. A dollar spent on junk food is not as good as a dollar spent on healthy food. And, no, a dollar spent on cleaning needlessly dirtied hotel towels is not as good as a dollar spent on, say, improving service in the hotel restaurant.

This fundamental misconception--the idea that buying stuff is buying stuff is buying stuff, and that all of it is equally valuable to the economy--is harmful wherever it finds expression, but it is particularly harmful in the United States, where we are already dangerously in thrall to the idea that vast amounts of consumption are necessary and good.

Especially in the United States, we need to make more, and better, distinctions about how we spend our money. We are arguably the most wasteful society on the planet. On the one hand, many of us buy amazing amounts of stuff we don't need and that fails to enrich our lives. On the other hand, there are numerous domains of American life--transportation, health care, education, leisure time, and others--that cry out for more, and more prudent, expenditures.

1. Properly understood, "thrift" means the ethic and practice of wise use.

If Keynes had merely insisted that there is a "paradox of saving," that would have been an interesting proposition. But Keynes chose to call it a paradox of thrift. That is a provocation, for "thrift" is a larger and more culturally consequential idea than "saving."

Keynes apparently didn't know this. In A Treatise on Money, he criticized "that voluntary abstinence of individuals from the immediate enjoyment of consumption, which we call Thrift." And then, remember, he insisted "it should be obvious that mere abstinence is not enough by itself to build cities or drain fens."

For Keynes, and countless others who have admired and followed him, thrift is abstinence, plain and simple. It's a wholly negative concept--it means not doing something (not enjoying the goods of consumption). It connotes passivity, quietude, voluntary withdrawal. That's why Keynes could contrast "Thrift," which for him means inactivity, with "Enterprise," which for him means activity.

But the root of "thrift" is "thrive," and a thrifty person is one who thrives.

Thrift connotes growing, flourishing, spreading out. A commonly repeated maxim from thrift's heyday as an American public value is that thrift makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before. There are plants that are commonly called "thrift." The celebrated 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica--the very edition that Keynes would have used in the 1920s--thus explains that "there are several species of plants, such as the sea-pink, Armeria maritima, or March rosemary (Statice) which from their vigorous growth are often termed 'thrift.' "

Thrift connotes industry, hard work, prosperity. The goal of thrift is to gain and enjoy the good things of life. Says the 16th-century poet John Lyly: "Thy heart's thirst is satisfied with thy hand's thrift." The great apostle of thrift Benjamin Franklin says: "Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich." When Franklin similarly advises that "Industry need not wish," he is offering a strategy for getting one's wishes: Be industrious. That strategy, he tells us, "consists very much in Thrift." Franklin openly states that "wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it."

Thrift connotes abundance. Thrifty people, as we've seen, tend to earn and spend much more than thriftless people. Says the 16th-century poet and courtier Sir Philip Sidney: "Thrift is the fuel of magnificence."

The thrift ethic is a secular expression of the religious principle of stewardship. The main idea is that we are not the owners of our wealth, but rather the trustees, who are therefore ethically obligated to use our wealth wisely and carefully, for our benefit and for the benefit of others. The Puritan divine Cotton Mather, who strongly influenced Franklin, writes in Essays to Do Good, published in 1710: "This may be said of all our estates: what God gives us, is not given for ourselves, but, 'for the Lord.' " A quarter-century later, Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanac, omits the theology and puts it this way: "The noblest question in the world is What good may I do in it?"

Thrift connotes saving, carefulness in spending, sustainability, and conservation. While such capacities do not define thrift, they are integral to the larger concept of wise use. Careful spending, for example, as we learn from several old writers, is "the handmaiden of generosity." Franklin constantly emphasizes the importance of frugality. For many decades during the 20th century, U.S. and British mutual savings banks gave away to their depositors small metal "Thrift Banks" (to save coins in) and pamphlet-style "Books of Thrift" (full of tips for Mom and Dad about household budgeting). A character called "Uncle Thrift," the star of an American children's book published in 1923, raps: We will be a thrifty nation, / When we all learn conservation.

Put the pieces together, and the concept of thrift turns out to be a sophisticated call for the ethics and practice of wise use. Thrift is the art of making the wisest use of all that we have--time, money, possessions, our health, and our society's natural resources--to promote both our own flourishing and the social good. The concepts most contrary to thrift are idleness and waste.

As the countless American and British advocates of thrift over the past several centuries knew, the notions of "mere abstinence" and "inactivity" can't remotely sum up the thrift ethic. When it comes to understanding what thrift is, Keynes and company are not even close. Indeed, it is only by misconceiving thrift that they have been able to foist a pernicious concept on the public mind.

To most people, the phrase "paradox of thrift" means that thrift can be a bad thing. The very existence of the phrase invites us to believe that personal restraint can be harmful and personal irresponsibility can be socially beneficial, that wastefulness is not so bad after all, and that what appears to be wise for me and my family can actually hurt society. It is past time to jettison such bankrupt thoughts and put the "paradox of thrift" out of its misery once and for all.

David Blankenhorn is president of the Institute for American Values and a co-editor of Franklin's Thrift: The Lost History of an American Virtue.

U2: The Stadium Psalmists & Prophets

Rock and Roll Reads Ecclesiastes