The price of gold hit a seventeen-year high today at $475.45 an ounce, the highest intraday price since January 25, 1988. Soaring oil prices and news of the deficit spending associated with the massive new $200 billion federal price tag on Katrina relief, have much to do with the dramatic increase in gold prices. Investors tend to buy gold in response to uncertainty in the economy, instability of the dollar, and inflation. Where were you, for example, in 1980 when, under the Carter Administration, consumer prices rose more than 12 percent and gold futures soared to $873 an ounce — an all-time high? Industry specialists are now concluding that gold may average $470 an ounce next year and perhaps $520 in 2007.

In related news, a spokesman for the Heritage Foundation yesterday told National Public Radio that the abusive “New Deal” deficit spending of the Bush Administration, especially in context of Katrina Relief, means that our children will not only pick up the price tag, but inherit an economy in shambles.

What does all this mean? “A wise man sees the danger and hides himself.” In times of economic crisis, unified families, local church, and debt freedom are important concepts.

Now is a great time to get out of debt and to go back to the biblical model of family life which is not only spiritually sound, but economically stronger than the pagan “turn my wife into a careerist and have the government raise my children and care for my own parents in their old age” philosophy of feminism and welfare statism. The biblical alternative includes as one approach: flexible patterns of families working together to make the home a place of production (instead of merely consumption); advocacy for families seeking the Lord for large numbers of godly children who will be trained through home education to be contributors to the economy of the household; encouragement of entrepreneurship; the ability to live with less; and the importance of joining informed, covenant-keeping, godly local churches that encourage debt-free, family-integrated home life for the glory of God.