Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. The national debt of the United States government is rapidly closing in on $37 trillion. Given that the nominal U.S. GDP is only $29 trillion, we owe significantly more than our economy produces.
Just the interest payment on the debt is now the third highest line item expense. In the budget, just after Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and just ahead of defense. It even surpasses our total federal tax revenue. In addition to the federal government, state and local debt amounts to another $3.2 trillion, and total credit card debt is currently over $1.28 trillion. In all, the total indebtedness of the United States, public and private, sits at nearly $105.
Trillion, though it's increasingly obvious that our national debt will never be repaid, the deficit continues to grow at an alarming rate. These numbers are simply too big to even understand. To put it in perspective, 1 trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
So our debt is now 100 times That number. To put it mildly, this bodes ill for our future. Out-of-control debt has been a significant factor in the collapse of every major world power in human history. For example, the French Revolution was partially triggered by a fiscal crisis which sparked civil war and left between 300,000 and 500,000 dead, not including those who were killed abroad in foreign wars. With apologies here to Dave Ramsey, there are a few times when a certain amount of debt can make sense.
Businesses can use debt to launch and expand. People can take on debt to buy a home or in emergencies. Governments can take on debt also in times of emergency. But overall, Ramsey's completely right. Scripture warns against that.
According to Proverbs 22, 7, the rich rules over the poor, the borrower is the slave of the lender. Paul says in Romans 13, owe no one anything except to love each other. God's assessment of the approach our government is taking is just as clear. The wicked borrows, but does not pay back. In the late 1930s, sociologist Paterim Sorokin distinguished between cultures that were sensate and cultures that were ideational.
Sensei cultures believe that reality is primarily sensory, that the truth can be found through empirical observation. These are the cultures who pursue sensory pleasure, material comfort, immediate gratification. Ideational cultures, on the other hand, are oriented beyond the material world to ideals, truths found from philosophy or divine revelation. Ideational societies aim for the future with a focus on self-discipline and aligning life and culture to those eternal truths. While ideational cultures can focus so much on the spiritual, they neglect the material, they also tend to encourage delayed gratification and build for the future.
Originally built on ideals and aimed at the future, America is now sensate and oriented around the demand for immediate gratification. That's what explains not only the incredible levels of personal and federal debt that we have. But also things like the decline of marriage, the widespread addictions to pornography and gambling. and the serious drop off in the birth rate. A nation that's captive to short term sensei thinking will look primarily to the government for all that it needs and desires.
We want things, and we expect the government to give us those things. Politicians want things, and fund them without ever counting the cost. As the government, it can spin and spin and spin without ever considering the burden placed on future generations. and a society with little vision for the future inevitably becomes sensei. As the British anthropologist Joseph Unwin put it, in these cultures life is for now.
And there's no long-term solution for the national debt crisis we are in without first dealing with the worldview that's at the root of the problem. The shift towards an ideational culture will involve the willingness to delay gratification. And that can only result from reattaching two eternal truths that point us beyond. here and now. It's a robust vision of the gospel of the kingdom, lived out through families and local communities that can rejuvenate the intermediate institutions of society.
Government overreach can be mitigated when people who rely on the government instead look elsewhere. especially to the church or other intermediate institutions of civil society. This begins with Christians who are content to be what Tom Holland has called weird, whose affections and loyalties are ordered by kingdom priorities. and not the sensate priorities of a culture. That's enslaved by debt.
For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored with Dr. Glenn Sunshine. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. For a version of this commentary that you can download and share with others, go to Breakpoint.org.
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