Greek People Go to the Polls

The Greek people go to the polls today to elect their next government.  What the outcome will be is anyone’s guess but the issues couldn’t be much graver.

It is only six weeks since Greece last had an election but the votes were so spread between the seven political parties and their views were at odds with each other to the extent that it proved impossible to form any kind of democratic government – hence another vote just six weeks later.

If the country is to know any degree of stability, it is essential that this vote proves more decisive than the last.  The difficulty is that nobody knows how to vote in order to bring about that stability.

Stark Choices

The issues could hardly be more stark.  The choices before the people of Greece appear to be some mixture of:

■         Accept the bailout package that has already been negotiated with the Eurozone countries, along with the severe austerity measures that were an essential part of the deal.  This option commits a very large proportion of the population to a difficult life for many years to come.

■         Accept the bailout package but seek to renegotiate the conditions to make them less stringent and allow Greece to invest in jobs and economic growth.  This sound like a better option but at present, the rhetoric coming from other Eurozone countries (crucially including Germany) suggests it is a non-starter.

■         Abandon the bailout package, which would mean that Greece as a nation would soon run out of money and effectively have to declare itself bankcrupt.

Of course there will be many variations around these options but none of them are particularly appealing.

Beyond these choices, the Greek people have to consider that their future as a member of the Eurozone is at stake and that could have further repercussions for their economy that nobody can predict with any degree of accuracy.

Even further, their exit from the Eurozone could have knock on effects for other Eurozone countries, leading to massive economic instability that would likely impact every other developed country on the globe.

The decisions before Greek voters today couldn’t be graver and even if an individual has decided which of the outcomes to go for, there is no absolute correlation between the outcomes and the parties standing for election.

What an unenviable decision to have to make!!!

Even Bigger Decision

Actually there is another decision that faces every man and woman on the planet and for the individuals, the outcome is even more serious than that facing Greek voters.

God calls every one of us to consider our future – not only in this life but going beyond into eternity.

Every one of us has got ourselves into a mess and, rather similar to the Greek situation, we need someone to bail us out because we can’t do anything about it ourselves.

The results of the mess we have made for ourselves can be clearly seen every day in our news broadcasts – people being blown up, others being jailed, many dying from hunger, thirst and disease.  There are those who are sold into slavery for sexual exploitation, others who are enslaved to drugs, alcohol or sex.  The list goes on but the root cause of them all is our own human selfishness, greed and passions.

A day of reckoning is coming and nobody will escape – nobody that is unless someone else is able to bail them out.  Fortunately God has done that for us but, rather like Greece and a number of other Eurozone countries, we must be prepared to accept the bailout deal.

Think about it carefully because your eternal destiny hangs on your decision.

For a fuller explanation see “The Most Important Thing

 

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