“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 153
“He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls” (Prov. 25:28).
If we strip away all the legal business entities that we structure and create for ourselves—partnerships, corporations, brokerage houses, multinationals, and so on—we still find, underneath it all . . . men. And if men are disciplined and self-controlled, then so will their business pursuits be. But if they have no rule over their own spirits, then they are defenseless.
In the business world, bubbles are the result of many men forsaking prudence, always eager to chase the next blue sky prospectus. And when bubbles burst, as they always do, the consequences cannot be abrogated by an act of Congress. When the invading army arrives at your city without walls, it will do not good to introduce legislation to have had the walls built already. The current meltdown in our financial markets is a remarkable exhibition of this truth—in a world where congressmen had self-control, and masters of the universe in the corporate boardrooms had self-control, and the man in the street seeking way too much in loans had self-control, this kind of thing could not happen. But it did happen, and we need to be reminded that self-control is part of the fruit of the Spirit.