Unemployment down?

According to an AP story written by Christopher Rugaber and published all over the web (check out the story here) the number of new unemployment claims "plummeted" to 352,000 last week. This figure has been "seasonally adjusted", meaning all the layoffs from temporary employment have been adjusted. How they do that accurately remains to be explained.

We are supposed to understand that since this is the fewest new claims since April, 2008, we are to take this as an upturn in our economy. Add to this the record sales at the end of year in 2011 and the big Ah Ha! is that we're suddenly out of the recession. I disagree with this surmise.

With gasoline prices still well more than $3 a gallon, and diesel prices closer to $4 per gallon, our economy is sadly sagging. Grocery prices are still steadily rising and no one seems to be able to tell us how many people are not on unemployment any longer because their benefits ran out.  Americans are still eating Pie In The Sky.

This reminds me sharply of the days of Jeremiah when Hananiah the son of Azur the prophet, who was from Gibeon, spoke t in the house of the LORD in the presence of the priests and of all the people, saying, "Thus speaks the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saying: 'I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon." It was a lie, of course, and Jeremiah quickly refuted it, but the priests and the king wanted words that tickled their ears so they rejected Jeremiah's words and held onto Hananiah's words. People back then wondered why God was turning His face from shining upon Jerusalem. They rejected the words of Isaiah and Jeremiah giving lip service to God but harboring within their hearts the foulest of attitudes and intentions completely forgetting that God searches the hearts of men.

The people of that time were oblivious to what God was pleading for. They rejected the things that God would have them do, and sought out their own pleasures. Is that any different than what Christians are doing today? We hide our heads when foul things come out of Hollywood... we embrace in secret pornographic things that come into our living room... we look the other way when women seek to abort innocent lives... we shut our mouths when we know someone desperately needs the Lord Jesus... we go the church every week but keep our wallets locked... we want to reduce our military into a namby-pamby mulch when the Evil in our world is growing stronger.

That doesn't even scratch the surface of how America is failing God. We have been blessed greatly. We are known as a Christian nation, thereby we are His people called by His name, but we do not bend our knees to Him seeking out our own pleasures rather than trying to please Him. If we do not turn from our wicked ways back to Him then we will suffer the same fate that Judah faced from Nebuchadnezzer, and the same fate Babylon faced after the hand writing on the wall.