Idols Don’t Fix Economies

What does economic turbulence reveal about a people’s character? Does it lay bare their anxiety, dependency, and lack of discipline—or does it draw out courage, resilience, and responsibility?

For decades now, financial upheaval has lingered in the air like a stubborn fog. Inflation, joblessness, and market crashes have become routine, almost expected. Entire generations have been raised under its shadow—baptized in the despondent waters of perpetual instability, in an economy where human effort often seems futile.

The refrain that “government will fix it” has long underpinned political campaigns and echoed the prevailing hope of the masses—resigned, as they are, to the presumed benevolence of politicians. These same politicians are all too eager to demand and dispense vast sums of taxpayer money. In such cycles, grand promises consistently eclipse actual results, discontent simmers in the air, and calls grow louder for a larger, kinder state.

Economic collapse has, in some respects, become a tool of manipulation. People are subtly conditioned to make decisions driven by anxiety—fertile ground for the rise of totalizing governance. This fear is compounded by a self-perception rooted less in productivity than in consumption. The anxiety centers not on what one may fail to build but on what one might not receive. Within this framework, the economy is treated as the domain of the State—deeply personal in effect but curiously impersonal in obligation. Responsibility is outsourced to a ‘benevolent Leviathan,’ expected to resolve the very crises born of the public’s abdication of personal agency.

“In any successful attack on freedom, the State can only be an accomplice. The chief culprit is the citizen who forgets his duty, wastes away his strength in the sleep of sin and sensual pleasure and so loses the power of his own initiative.” -Abraham Kuyper

Inflation—and economic collapse more broadly—is, in many ways, the consequence of abdicated responsibility. Economics is, at its core, a moral affair. When the State is tasked with redistributing wealth—a concept that presumes State ownership and regulation of property—and with building and repairing the economy, it inevitably demands exorbitant taxes from its citizens. This is not mere policy drift; it is the ironic fruit of human idolatry. The so-called welfare state is, in truth, a judgment on a people who have crowned Caesar lord over governance and economy, rather than God.

Yet even those who see through the welfare state's ploys often fail to disarm it through a reordering of worship. Instead, they simply reshuffle the machinery of federal power. They trade a blue idol for a red one and call it reform. In doing so, they claim to defend the mores of liberty and prosperity, while severing those ideals from their source: truth. They want the fruit of the Christian faith without the obligation of bowing to Christ the King.

What is an economy in Darwin’s world, if not a battleground where evolving matter competes for survival? In this framework, man is no builder, no bearer of dominion—he is merely a consumer, driven by fear of scarcity and the threat of extinction. Darwin’s theories serve as the philosophical foundation for both socialist and oligarchic systems (the latter often euphemized as crony capitalism). Marxism, in essence, is Darwinism applied to economics: a system where envy supplants productivity, revolutionary fervor replaces justice, and generosity becomes a distant myth. Love narrows into self-interest, and liberation collapses into enslavement to vice.

Darwin’s dogma now lingers in the woodwork and the air—a corrosive agent that erodes dignity and extinguishes the sense of duty to God and neighbor. Man no longer recognizes freedom because he no longer knows who he is. He no longer understands prosperity because he has lost his reverence for God—and with it, his recognition of others as fellow image-bearers.

In an age marked by economic uncertainty, the temptation is to idolize safety and vilify risk. Yet it is precisely in such times that the call to build becomes most urgent.

Economics is not only a matter of morality but of theology. Man’s capacity to flourish is inseparable from a right relationship with God. It is God who conceived the very notions of economics, freedom, and prosperity. To know Him is to discover the path of fruitfulness. Properly understood, economics is the discipline that enables human flourishing—and the key to such flourishing lies uniquely within Christianity. Through His Word, God provides the only blueprint capable of building durable, thriving economies. On this basis, Christians are not merely permitted—but called—to assume responsibility for cultivating free and flourishing economic systems wherever they live.

For over thirty years, New Saint Andrews College has stood as a beacon of freedom and flourishing, grounded in truth as the cornerstone of its instruction. Beyond its exceptional pedagogy, the college has, since its founding, rejected federal funding—deliberately safeguarding its mission to forge Christian cultural leadership. In doing so, it offers more than an education; it offers a model. Students are not trained to see themselves as cogs in a statist machine, existing merely to survive and consume. They are taught to be builders and shapers of culture—men and women who embrace personal responsibility for the honor of their Lord and the highest good of their neighbor.

In an age marked by economic uncertainty, the temptation is to idolize safety and vilify risk. Yet it is precisely in such times that the call to build becomes most urgent. These are the moments that demand allegiance to the promises of God—and the courage to get to work.

Angst and fear often deter us from affiliating with, investing in, or partnering alongside the very institutions capable of turning the tide. Yet the mission of New Saint Andrews College transcends economic flux. While numbers and forecasts may shift, the college remains resolute in its commitment to the kind of education that reforms culture. It offers academic excellence of the highest order—at a price rooted in integrity, not predatory debt.

Tariff wars may erupt and prices may swing, but NSA is not merely a commentator on economic tides. It is a source of the substance that builds enduring economies.