Why does the average American family have $16,000 in credit card debt? Why was the savings rate, up until very recently, less than 0%? Why are most people upside down on their car loans right now? Why is consumption and consumer activity dropping like a rock? Why are we obese? Why are heart disease and diabetes skyrocketing?

When my wife was a child, she was told a story about two little girls who magically got to choose between two life scenarios: have the first half of life be pleasant and easy but the last part be painful and marked by hardship, or let the first half be marked by hardship and pain and the last half be marked by pleasure and gain and ease.

Then the story followed those two girls in their decisions. The moral was that pleasure now and pain later equips you neither to use the pleasure appropriately, nor handle the pain later. But pain now and pleasure later equips you to handle both. She learned a great lesson from that story and has always been miles ahead of me in this area. My own upbringing was more “normal.” It was marked by just the opposite approach.

A couple years ago Barbara Walters had a 20/20 special on the children of Appalachia. My wife and I watched it just because it was about a place we both know and love. We spent much time in Eastern Kentucky when we lived in Georgetown, Ohio. It was our vacation spot. The highlight of my year was a boys-only striper fishing trip on Lake Cumberland.

The program was a profile of four young people and their families trying to make it in Eastern Kentucky, which is a very poor region.

Now, I do not want to take away from the hardships that come with poverty. I will not minimize them. But their poverty was made worse . . . was actually made into a trap because of their own intergenerational behavior.

The main difference between rich and poor is not birthplace, or education level, or the area of the country, or the quality of the schools. It’s not the local economy. The main difference between rich and poor is the ability to delay gratification in anticipation of greater rewards down the road. There’s an old country saying that’s full of wisdom: “Don’t eat your seed-corn.” These kids came from family situations where it was the normal course of things to “eat their seed-corn.” Opportunities and resources are regularly squandered in favor of transitory pleasures now.

It was apparent in the lives of these four kids, and it was apparent that they would probably end up repeating their parents’ mistakes. Like what? Drunkenness. Idleness. Addiction to OxyContin (also called “Hillbilly Heroin.”) Drinking so much Mountain Dew that it rotted the teeth (Barbara Walters tried to blame Pepsi for that problem). Sex and pregnancy outside of marriage. Incest between a half-brother and half-sister, to which the half-sister willingly acquiesced in exchange for gifts of drugs and alcohol.

One young man had a football scholarship to the college in Pikeville. He dropped out after 8 weeks because it was just too hard. Back to the squalor. Back to the drunken, dysfunctional family. Back to digging coal out of the exposed seams on the roadside to heat the house.

One family was shown putting Pepsi in a baby bottle. They ate a meal of noodles with ketchup on them. The food stamps had run out, so they were hungry. We were informed that vegetables and fruits generally weren’t on the menu because they were too expensive.

That’s simply not true. As an experiment in personal health and well-being, I recently became a vegan. It does not have to be expensive. True, arugula and tahini and sun-dried tomatoes and Swiss chard are expensive. Dried beans, dry rice (of the Asian, not the instant variety), corn, potatoes, lentils, spinach, canned tomatoes, and green beans and such are quite inexpensive. If you cook for yourself and learn to eat like a third world peasant, you can eat quite cheaply. And it’s better for you.

But also I know the area. The bottomlands and flat spots are relatively fertile soil and there is a tolerably long growing season. There were places to plant a garden if the old cars and junk in the yard were moved aside. A vegetable garden and a little canning would help stretch the food stamp proceeds and provide healthy food.

At an old Presbyterian mission in Eastern Tennessee where I took some kids on a mission trip, they had canners and supplies that could be borrowed like you borrow books from the library. There’s no zoning down there. They could keep a milk cow and some chickens if they wanted to. They had room. Deer, rabbits, and squirrels are plentiful to the point of being obnoxious pests.

But nope. “We’re out of food stamps. We’ll just be hungry until the next batch comes in the mail.” The sluggard buries his hand in the dish and he’s too lazy to bring it to his own mouth (Prov 26:15). Hunger, even in one’s own children, won’t motivate some folks to do right. Shoot, the fishing’s really good down there. What self-respecting hillbilly won’t even go fishing to feed his family?

They interviewed the owner of several coal mines in the area. He had worked his way through college by working in the mines, so he was no silk-stocking white-shoe type who had everything handed to him. He said he had 100 open positions. Those positions paid $60,000 a year to start, with good insurance. That’s an enormous sum of money down there. But he couldn’t fill them because the labor pool couldn’t pass the drug screening to get hired.

I’ve known several coal miners. Underground mining is dirty, it’s dangerous, and they still haven’t fully dealt with the black lung disease problem, but a man could live on $25,000 in Eastern Kentucky very easily, work for a year or two or three and save up $20-30,000 dollars. On that, he could move on to other places with other opportunities. Instead they spend huge amounts of money on tobacco and fast food, and go out and get into hock for $30,000 pickups.

If these people didn’t drink alcohol to excess, if they went to school, if they didn’t guzzle Mountain Dew by the gallon, if they worked hard and played by the rules and didn’t start taking highly addictive opiates, if they didn’t have sex outside of wedlock, if they would garden and can and hunt and fish and spend their money wisely, they would have a fair shot at escaping poverty.

How do I know? My family did it. We were hillbillies. We were upper middle class white trash (and some of us still are). And those that did it did it in the First Great Depression to boot. Even more amazing, they did it by farming and business in the agricultural sector which was the hardest hit sector in the Great Depression. Those that escaped poverty were able to do it because they learned how to delay gratification.

Before we middle class folk get too uppity, it must be noticed that as a subculture we have become increasingly unable to delay gratification. We now act like the poor. We eat our seed-corn, too. It’s just that up until recently our bag of seed-corn was a lot larger than it is for the poor.

Why does the average American family have $16,000 in credit card debt? Why was the savings rate, up until very recently, less than 0%? Why are most people upside down on their car loans right now? Why is consumption and consumer activity dropping like a rock? Why are we obese? Why are heart disease and diabetes skyrocketing? (I say this as a fat man who needs to take his own advice.)

Because we are psychologically unable to delay gratification. Because we’ve had our faces planted in our bags of seed-corn, and we’ve eaten them all the way to the bottom, and now we’re in trouble. Now there’s nothing left. That is the root cause of the Second Great Depression, which we are now in, and which shows no real signs of abating.

Two years ago the U.S. Federal Government’s obligations actually amount to more money than the Gross Domestic Product of the ENTIRE WORLD!!! That was before two bailouts and two rounds of Quantitative Easing. It’s much, much worse now.
You can’t become personally prosperous by borrowing and spending for consumption. You can’t grow an economy by borrowing and spending and consuming, either.

Consumption does not provide a base for an economy to grow. Savings and investment in producing things that other people want to buy is how you grow an economy. That’s why the stimulus bills and bailouts are ultimately a swindle.

Behaving like the Chinese grows an economy. The Chinese, who are still officially Communists, build and produce and save and invest, and they are the ones being asked to finance our bailout because they’re sitting on the largest pile of our dollars that’s ever existed in history. The average Chinese worker makes $104 per month, and he saves more than 20% of what he earns.

General Electric is a sterling example of this. In the past, GE was a manufacturing powerhouse, making appliances, light bulbs, industrial equipment, etc., etc. Now the bulk of their earnings comes from GE Capital and GE Finance. It comes from pushing money around.

The middle class, and even the rich, have begun to behave like the poor. And our behavior will lead us and our children into poverty. The biggest challenge that the reader faces in the next ten years is not in the job market or the economy or the realm of politics. It is between his or her ears. You have got to shake off your fetters and begin to delay gratification and embrace discomfort, patience, slow acquisition, and thrift. A little pain now will pay huge dividends later. Learn to embrace it the way that some folks embrace the pain of exercise. Feel the “burn.”

Learn to love it. I struggle with this myself. I really, really want an iPhone. I simply cannot afford that and the tuition to send my kids to the Christian school that I am working with the Missouri Synod Lutherans to create here in Sturgis. I’d also like a new car. Or a newer used car. It’s not gonna happen right now. I accept that. My kids and their spiritual, moral, and intellectual development are more important.

And you have got to teach your children to do so as well. Begin immediately. It’s absolutely crucial. Compel them to save a portion of their allowance. Force them to wait patiently to acquire whatever toy their heart yearns for. Teach them to tithe.

And I’m going to say something else that’s going to sound snobbish. Do with it what you will.

I noticed a long time ago that if you take a dog and bring it inside the house and socialize it, it will behave more “humanly.” But if you put it with two or three other dogs out in the back yard it will be wild and “doggy” its whole life, and no fun at all to have in the house.

If you take a cockatiel or a parakeet and raise it by itself in a family that interacts with it, it will learn to do amazing things and be a very pleasant pet. If you stick it in a cage with three or four other birds it will just squawk and bite and make messes. It will stay “birdy.”

If you are very careful about your children’s friends and playmates, and do not allow any significant relationships with children who do not share your family’s values, and especially at adolescence when your child’s peers are becoming more and more important, your child will take on your values. If you let them lie down with dogs, they’ll get up with fleas. They will become worldly. Bad company corrupts good morals (1 Cor 15:33). This is why Christian kids who go to public schools are often such a spiritual and moral train wreck. You cannot undo 30-35 hours a week of indoctrination by the enemies of God, along with total immersion in a godless youth subculture, by 4-5 hours per week of religious instruction.

And you are not as strong as you think you are, either. If your most significant relationships are with non-Christians or worldly Christians, you will not break out of this trap yourself. The initial function of what became known as snobbery was to protect those who had learned these fragile and difficult lessons from the cancerous influence of those who had not. It was a commonsense implementation of 1 Cor 15:33.

Self-denial and self-control and avoidance of all activities that are sinful or tend to dissipate one’s energies and substance are a big part of the Christian life. Hard work and diligence, “redeeming the time,” (Eph 5:16-17) simplicity and contentment, striving to lead a quiet life of productive work while minding your own affairs, (1 Thess 4:11-12) and making more than you need so you have something to share (Eph 4:28) are all elements of sanctification and the gospel-centered life. These also tend to produce material well-being and even wealth.

My maternal grandfather owned a grain elevator in Hayti, Mo. He was basically a grain broker. He was also the first in his family to send all of his kids to college. My Dad loves to tell the story about the farmer acquaintance who came to my grandfather for advice at the elevator one day. He wanted to send his daughter to college, but he didn’t know anything about colleges and cost and whatnot. This would have been in the early 1960′s. He dressed in worn out, patched bib overalls. He drove a truck that was 15 years past its prime and one fender was literally wired on with baling wire.

“Well, the cost and quality of colleges varies a lot. How much money do you figure you can spend to send her to college?” Granddaddy asked, as he eyed the old pickup.
“About $100,000.” he said.

My grandfather just about spit his RC Cola all over the man. That’s serious money now. It was a small fortune in the early ’60′s. This man looked poor, but he had plenty of money to spend. Today, we look wealthy and are broke.

I don’t know if that man was a Christian or not, but one thing is certain. He was, at the very least, operating off the storehouse of Christian values that sustained our culture for a couple of generations after biblical Christianity was widely abandoned. We need to refill that storehouse. Now.

Brian Carpenter is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. He currently is serving as pastor of the Foothills Community Church in Sturgis, SD. This article first appeared at the Johannes Weslianus blog and is used with their permission. [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]